By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
MEL Chappel gleams with pride as he surveys Dandenong CFA station’s wall-to-wall trophy cabinets which are brimming with memorabilia which is up to 120 years old.
Hundreds of trophies are crammed not side by side but in front of one another, such as a prize clock and photos of state and national championship winning teams.
They speak volumes of the station’s upright traditions.
“That is our history,” Mr Chappel said.
“We don’t want to get rid of any of it.
“I have nothing but admiration for the station’s team. A lot of us are proud of what we’ve done.”
At a brigade dinner last month, Mr Chappel received the Gold Star medal for 30 years’ service – which adorns his uniform near the first bar of the National Medal for 25-plus years of above-the-norm service.
He was also crowned the brigade’s runner-up fire-fighter for 2014 – keeping up a cracking pace of volunteerism despite a pronouncedly painful knee.
The brigade life member still goes out to 50 calls a year and puts in 10 hours a week filling the paperwork as the brigade’s longest-serving secretary.
“No one else wants to do the job, unfortunately,” he said of his 19-year secretarial stint.
Every night, he calls into the station “just to see what’s here”.
Mr Chappel is also an executive member, life member and brigade delegate for the CFA Rescue Association.
Somehow he plans to pick up the pace when he has a titanium knee installed in the near future.
“We’ve prided ourselves as individuals to going out to as many calls as we could.
“I just hope the younger ones have the same dedication in the future. But there’s work commitments, doing other things.”
There’s also a tradition of knowledge and wisdom being passed down by the station’s elders.
Foreman Ted Aldred was Mr Chappel’s early mentor and Mr Chappel, as a former juniors coach, taught the CFA’s regional commander Trevor Owen as a fledgling.
He said fire-fighting is his life.
His day job is as a private technician who services and installs fire equipment and his father and grandfather also fought fires.
His first call-out with the CFA was Ash Wednesday 1983 – a true baptism of fire.
He walked in off the street, desperate to lend a hand as a makeshift emergency camp was set up in Berwick for the Dandenongs fires.
Mr Chappel, who had done a shift as a lifesaver in Edithvale that day, fatefully was “the next one” in line to jump onto a truck assigned for Upper Beaconsfield.
That unit and a Panton Hill crew were later entrapped and killed by a fire front which was unleashed as the wind turned.
As he helped a friend try to find his parents in Upper Beaconsfield, the destructive scenes hit home.
“It’s in the back of my mind. For some unknown reason I have a fascination with helping other people.
“You have a sixth sense of what to do.”
Since then he has fought fires in Bunyip State Forest on Black Saturday, pulled smoke-dazed people out of the Liege Court nursing home “death trap” in Noble Park and hauled down sight-seers stranded on Arthurs Seat chairlift.
The worst jobs remain rescuing trapped occupants in a car crash.
“Any time you actually pull someone out alive is a good result.”
More often, the drivers have been affected by the drug ice. Sometimes the syringe is still in the driver’s arm at the crash scene, Mr Chappel said.
“I did one when the drug-dealer was still on the (driver’s) phone.”
