From Inside the Fire Truck, This Is What They Saw

From inside the truck barreling through burning trees, it looked like the end of the world. Sparks flew past the windows as crew members with Fire and Rescue New South Wales confronted a blaze south of Nowra, Australia, on Tuesday. Then suddenly, there was nothing but flames. "The crew from Fire and Rescue NSW Station 509 Wyoming recorded this video showing the moment their truck was overrun by the bushfire," reads a tweet accompanying the video, per CNN. The crew, seen holding a safety blanket against the windows, "was forced to shelter in their truck as the fire front passed through." It's just one image of "one of the worst days so far in the country's fire crisis," per the Telegraph. In another video shared on Twitter, a man takes shelter in a boat off Mallacoota, Victoria, under a blood-red sky.

Shielding his face with goggles and a bandana, the man utters 12 F-bombs in 52 seconds while expressing his hope that others are safe, per Digg. Some 4,000 people were stranded on the shore and in the water as one of Victoria's eight emergency-level fires encircled the seaside town, per the Telegraph. One man said there was "pitch blackness" even in daytime. "You suddenly start to see completely burnt leaves falling out of the sky around you. Then the wind increases. The ash starts to come through like sleet," he said. Another eight emergency-level fires are burning in NSW, where at least two people died on Tuesday. A 28-year-old volunteer firefighter whose wife is pregnant with their first child was also killed Monday when his truck was overtaken by flames, per the Telegraph, which notes several other people are missing. (More Australia stories.)