The January 18 firestorm happened nearly 24 years ago, but stories from that devastating day continue to surface.
One of them is about Peter Young, now 60.
He was working alone in Centrelink's data centre in Tuggeranong as the firestorm approached on that January day in 2003.
Two colleagues had been working with him earlier in the day but had to leave to protect their homes in Kambah and Bonython.
Peter, who lived in Queanbeyan at the time, stayed behind as the fires approached.
The air-conditioner stopped working, sending the temperature inside to 45 degrees. Smoke started to infiltrate the building. The fire was approaching. And Peter was left with the decision to shut down the data centre completely, sending Centrelink and its vast network of social security payments offline.
The data centre at Tuggeranong Office Park in Greenway was close to bushland on the Murrumbidgee River and the fires were bearing down on the western and southern fringes of Canberra.
"The fires caught hold of the cooling towers at the back of the building, so I had to go and grab a fire truck that was just passing by and they put all the bushes out around the cooling towers," Mr Young said.
"There were no taps at the back of the building so I couldn't even fill buckets to put out the fires. The fire truck was out on Athllon Drive so I flagged that down.
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"Then I had to go and power down all the equipment, and then take all the back-up tapes home that night at seven o'clock."
The data centre at the time held all the department mainframes, meaning Centrelink came to "a grinding halt".
Shutting down the system was not as simple as one flick of the switch.
"I was used to the mainframe type of equipment, because I was a mainframe operator. Some of the other servers were quite foreign to me. The phone system was just too congested to make phone calls, so we ended up just powering them off at the power buttons.
"Early the next day the slow process of powering all the equipment back up started.
"Happily though, nearly all the equipment came back online with only a crucial mainframe storage component affected. Spare parts were rushed in by the suppler and we were back online processing again by midday."
Just a few days later, Mr Young was asked to attend a ceremony for Australia Day at Centrelink HQ.
"I didn't even know why I was there," he said.
Mr Young was presented with an Australia Day achievement award from Centrelink for his "selfless support to Centrelink and its customers" during the firestorm.
"I was gobsmacked," he said.
Peter framed the medal with some photographs of the fires near Pine Island on the day of the firestorm, which had been taken by a colleague.
Then, in 2020, he and his wife Helen moved from Queanbeyan to Googong and the framed medal went missing.
"We just couldn't find it," he said. "We made a very concerted effort to find it but it never turned up."
Two years ago, Peter's mum, Rosemary Young, started doing their family history.
"And something came up that I'd actually won the Australia Day award," he said.
Mrs Young started trying to locate any records relating to her son's lost medal and if there was any chance it could be replaced.
"After many knockbacks from various departments, a call came through one day from one of Katy Gallager's staff regarding how they could help. They couldn't be sure and not to get her hopes up, but they would look into it," he said.
Michael Wood, from Services Australia, was instrumental.
"Much gratitude to him because he was the one who drove that for two years," Mr Young said.
Three weeks ago, Mr Young was presented with his replacement medal. Mr Wood had even managed to get former Centrelink chief executive Sue Vardon to sign the award certificate.
"It was indeed a great surprise and an emotional night when my mother broke the news to me, as I was not aware that she had been doggedly pursuing this for the past two years in secret," he said.
Mr Young is now a Dell Australia service delivery manager working for Defence at Brindabella Business Park.
His replacement medal is very special to him, and he thanked both Ms Gallagher's office and Services Australia.
"My wife has now framed the award medallion, along with my co-workers photos of the bushfires. It now takes pride of place in my living room and all the visitors who come to our home notice it straight away and want to know more about the story behind the medal," Mr Young said.
"I am very proud to be honoured again in having this medal back and remembering the very small part I played on that tragic Saturday in 2003 and to all those others who gave much much more than I.
"It is still the highlight of my 20-year service career at Centrelink."
