You're driving along an unfamiliar road, in what feels like the middle of nowhere, on a hot day - maybe there's a total fire ban in place, and things are looking pretty dry.
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You go around a corner and there's a column of smoke ahead, and a grassfire is racing across a paddock.
When you phone Triple Zero, what do you tell the call taker?
According to the experts at the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority in Mount Helen - the people on the other end of the phone - the priority is location.
Even if you're not sure where you are, the more information that can be passed on, the easier and faster the response will be.
A good tip is to use an app like Google Maps or VicEmergency, and if that's not working, try to identify what road you're on and if there are any landmarks that can help - small things like kilometre markers can help local brigades find the emergency.
Shannon Robinson and Darren Hill are veterans at ESTA, working for five and 10 years respectively as call takers, dispatchers, and supervisors at Mount Helen, which received the majority of Triple Zero calls during the recent fires.
Calls also went to centres in Burwood East and Docklands.
Summer presents plenty of challenges, though calls haven't been any worse this year, they said.
"We do have pre-summer training which is more of a refresh for our skills, but we're always working on those skills throughout the year anyway," Mr Hill said.
"It's making sure we're all at the same level before it officially kicks in.
"When they start to come in, our work ramps off with everyone trying to do their burnoffs, so we might have a lot of burnoff jobs come through, but then depending on how well-prepared people are, a lot of our workload might be burnoffs getting out of control as well."
Ms Robinson projects calmness, which is an important part of a job that often involves trying to communicate with people in what she said is a "heightened state".
"It goes from 0 to 100 in about two seconds, and you just handle it," she said.
"It's the nature of the beast though, we don't know when it will actually happen.
"We might get warnings to say there's lightning storms coming through the north or whatever, and we can tell our operators there's a possibility, and then nothing happens - it's the days when you don't get the warnings, and it happens, then it all happens."
The call takers then liaise with dispatchers from the various emergency services, and brigades and other units are sent out.
Sometimes, the call takers stay on the line with people to talk them to safety, which not only saves their lives, but gets more information to emergency services.
"We need to ensure that we pass on whatever the requirements are from the emergency services, but we're passing on that information back to them," Mr Hill said.
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"For me, personally, situations where it also involves young kids - I've got three young kids myself - they really hit home, but you know that if you're in their situation, what type of help would you need? You try to provide that for them."
It's essential but stressful work - Mr Hill said he often didn't know how severe events he'd been helping out with during the day were until he saw them on television when he went home, but noted the support systems in the workplace were helpful.
Ms Robinson said the staff at the workplace were helpful, "like a big family".
"The St Patrick's Day fire, two or three years ago - that didn't take off until 10 or 11pm, and we had people come in straight away without really having to ask, they were aware of the situation," she said.
"You always feel for your colleagues that are sitting there under the pump all the time, you want to come in and help."
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