JASPER Waites was excited to celebrate his third birthday with a party with friends and family- that was until the recent Landsborough fires changed his plans.
While Jai, Jasper’s mum was worried about the fires reaching their home on Cottonwood Court in Landsborough, she was also concerned about ruining her son’s third birthday party planned for the Sunday.
“It was pretty hectic, and it was pretty scary, though we were more worried about ruining his birthday. I was thinking what am I going to do, I’ve got cake and presents, I don’t want to ruin his birthday,” she said.
With the fires worsening on Saturday night, his birthday party seemed unlikely, however luckily it was still able to go ahead the next day as planned at Skippy Park.
“The fireys efforts were insane, I can’t believe how close it got! I didn’t realise until the next day how bad it was and how well they did to save all of those homes.
“It was pretty confronting when you saw everything. I’m super grateful for them and feel really bad because I’m sure they worked some really brutal hours to try and keep it all under control.”
Jasper was enjoying all the excitement, in awe of the waterbombers, helicopters, fire and in his words, “big smoke”, however, both Jasper and Jai wanted to do something to show their appreciation to the fireys.
“We had just finished eating what we could of the birthday cake which was huge, we had so much left over and we didn’t want to waste it, so I asked Jasper if we should go and give it to the fireys,” Jai said.
“We thought they’ve done such hard work and they’ve looked after us and they’re the only reason we could have a party so we took the cake to them because they could use the sugar.”
The fireys at the Landsborough Rural Fire Brigade were grateful for the thoughtful gesture from little Jasper and Jai.
“Their reaction as really sweet.
At first they were a bit confused when we first walked in and they were like what are you doing,” Jai said.
“We offered them the treats and thanked them for making sure my house didn’t burn down, and they were really nice… my heart was so warm when they thanked us.”