![\"Firefighter](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/a4b554fdbec78dae3007d28351ce5514f340a924.jpg\")
Camera IconFirefighter Matt Beilken. Gary Ramage Credit: The West Australian<\/p>\nEllenbrook father and volunteer firefighter Matt Beilken has recounted the terrifying moment he was forced to shelter inside his own home during Thursday\u2019s bushfire emergency.<\/p>\n
Mr Beilken managed to safely evacuate his two young children to a neighbours\u2019 house before flames reached his property minutes later, forcing him to stop firefighting efforts and shelter indoors.<\/p>\n
\u201cInitally it was moving in a sort of northerly direction and then at one stage we had a wind change, and it came straight at my house,\u201d he told The West.<\/p>\n
Camera IconFirefighter Matt Beilken. Gary Ramage Credit: The West Australian<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to seek shelter at one stage because the flames were coming right up to my garage.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce I realised that the fire was coming my way, I quickly threw the kids in the car. One of my neighbours was standing out the front, so I drove the kids and the dog over, and asked him to look after them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids got pretty freaked out at one stage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Beilken said he was \u201cin a spot of bother\u201d when he was forced to shelter indoors.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was pretty much straight into defence mode. I had the hose going anyway, just watering down the edges of the carport and just basically hoping that it was going to blow over quickly so I could get into defence as quickly as possible before any part of my house got taken out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Beilken, a volunteer firefighter, said his bushfire plan could have potentially saved his home \u2014 which is located less than 10m away from bushland.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first time I\u2019ve actually had to defend a house . . . my first time defending a house from a fire was my own house.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just got back from the Boddington bushfire last weekend, and again, straight into it four or five days later.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ellenbrook father and volunteer firefighter Matt Beilken has recounted the terrifying moment he was forced to shelter inside…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":551696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,164887,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-551695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-bushfires","10":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115978756821402134","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}