I actually witnessed one of these, back in 2001 during the New Year fires in Sydney. It was the second of January - the night the fires had intensified and the F3 freeway had been closed due to fires leaping into the inroad islands and burning everything in their path. My brother and I had a morbid sense of curiosity and decided to go for a drive around the Peninsula to have a look at all the drivers that had been caught on their way to Sydney and had been diverted to temporary shelters in Parks and Community centers nearby. That's when we got a call from one of my brother's friends telling us they were evacuating his grandma who lived further up and firmly within bushland. He begged us to help as he didn't think he'd get there on time. So off we went, blissfully ignorant of the danger we're stepping into. While we considered ourselves to be seasoned 'Aussies' by then, we'd never actually been involved in a partial evacuation and had no idea what to expect. The road on the way was just teeming with cars and SES firetrucks. We had to cross a police checkpoint and after briefly assuring the officer that we had legitimate reason to be going in and that yes, she had not yet evacuated and yes, she was expecting us and we needed to get her out, he let us through. My first hint of how much trouble we were in came as soon as we winded down the car windows: the air stank of burn charcoal and bits of black soot balls were raining down all over. But we continued - the plan was to pick up the lady, grab as little as we could of her belongings, get back in the car, floor it and drive back as fast as we could. We got as far as packing the belongings before we started to hear the roaring and the firetrucks flying through. We were stuck trying to figure out how to get a belligerent cockatiel from its cage when we saw the flames in the horizon, leaping from treetop to treetop and I looked at my brother and just went 'fuck it', and stuck my hand in that cage, grabbed the fucking bird and dragged it into a shoebox as it was ripping my fucking skin off with its beak in retaliation. I was past caring. I wanted out.

I saw it as my brother drove down the road, as I was sitting on the back, nursing my hand and briefly thinking about winding down that window and chucking that shoebox out. Fucking thing was glorious in a creepy way. The smoke was turning in a clear funnel and within it, flames were caught up creating this fire vortex that begun as a wispy frail thing and soon enough gained substance and texture. It sucked all the flames from its base, so the effect was just this lone, twirling fire tornado going erratically away from us. I was so fascinated and so fucking wired from the whole experience that I didn't realise I was still in pain from that vicious bite until we were back in the peninsula, away from the fire and back into the relative safety of the frying pan.