Qld bushfires: Latest updates and warnings as more than 40 fires rage across Western Downs and rest of the state
A second person has died in Queensland’s bushfire emergency as the town of Tara remains in the line of an out-of-control blaze that has burnt 11,000ha, as firefighters describe the worst conditions they’ve ever seen. LATEST UPDATES
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A second person has died in Queensland’s bushfire emergency as the Western Downs township of Tara is threatened by an out-of-control blaze.
The Courier-Mail can reveal an elderly woman had a cardiac arrest and died while preparing to evacuate her property on Monday. A second person died on fire grounds near Tara on Tuesday.
On Tuesday firefighters were assessing properties along Chinchilla-Tara Road – between Joseph Rd and Timothy Rd – where they located a deceased man near a burnt out, single-storey structure.
The remains were located near a dam at approximately 6.30pm, and recovered at 11.25pm.
Police said they believed the body found was that of a missing adult male, as investigations continued into the circumstances of his death.
A report will be prepared for the Coroner.
At least five homes have been destroyed, along with thousands of hectares of bushland, and is now threatening Tara.
Multiple warnings for residents to “leave immediately” remain current, while residents in other areas who have already evacuated have been told it’s still not safe to return.
SCROLL DOWN FOR THE LATEST FIRE WARNINGS AND ALERTS
Superintendent Wayne Waltisbuhl spoke to The Courier-Mail from the Incident Command Centre at Dalby on Wednesday, saying the fire was running out of control.
“This is my 43rd fire season. This is the worst conditions I’ve seen over those years,” he said.
“We’ve seen fire behaviour at night time that (caused) some really good and experienced firefighters last night to ring up and go ‘we’ve never seen this sort of fire behaviour at night’.”
Superintendent Waltisbuhl said crews were trying to prevent the bushfire from turning towards Tara, which was about 12km south of the fire.
“So this morning, we’re working on some strategic fire breaks that a lot of machinery is working on and some aerial support through our large aerial tanker.
“We are also putting retardant lines down to strengthen that to try and stop the movement of that fire in a southerly direction towards the town.
“So we need to prepare the town for that fire advancing on them as well, at the same time we want to stop it.”
He said a combination of rainfall over the last few years had resulted in a lot of growth, followed by a period of drought.
“So we’ve got this ladder fuel combination of grasses on the ground, linking up to middle strata, and then right up to the canopy.
“There were 20m flames coming out on the top of the forest out there and spotting into people’s yards and fires start straight away.”
On Tuesday night, crews were forced to withdraw from the fire ground as the blaze became too large to control.
“So it comes a point in time we have to make those decisions that we can’t stop this fire, let’s make sure everybody in front of the fire is out.”
Superintendent Waltisbuhl said the number of properties destroyed was unclear, but he expected there would be “many”.
Dozens of people attended a community meeting at Tara on Wednesday to address the dangerous fire.
Supt Waltisbuhl said the fire had already burnt through 11,000 hectares and the fire front was about a few hundred metres wide at one point.
“We haven’t really been able to contain this fire at all,” he said.
“That’s a reality check that this a dangerous fire.”
On Wednesday, crews had put in place one significant fire break and were working on another.
Supt Waltisbuhl expected the winds to push the fire south, before spinning back around by the end of the day.
He said crews were being flown in from interstate and overseas as crews worked around the clock.
“If the breaks hold, we feel we will have a lot of containment by tomorrow.”
The Tara evacuation centres have been closed and all those evacuees have been told to relocate to Dalby.
QFES Acting Assistant Commissioner Peter Hollier said more than 350 people had been evacuated around the Tara and Wieambilla areas. They are being relocated from Tara to Dalby, he said.
There was a warning in place for the township of Tara.
“There are still multiple crews and aircraft working on the crews at this stage,” he said.
“At this stage it’s a fast moving grass fire in some of those areas, the remainder is still in very difficult terrain that we are having difficulty accessing.
“We have had the use of the large air tanker today which conducted a number of drops in the Tara township ahead of any potential weather that we may experience in the next few days.”
Assistant Commissioner Hollier said there were 60 active fires across Queensland.
“As you are well aware we have been fighting more than 100 vegetation fires across the state already this week,” he said.
“As the conditions are prevailing, certainly the very high to extreme fire danger conditions are still continuing.
“Today 130 QFES vehicles are in attendance across those 60 fires and conditions are still remaining hot, dry, windy and areas are very high and extreme (for fire danger).
“We’ve got a range of fire weather forecasts that are issuing for tomorrow, again fire weathers across a range of areas including Central West, the North West, Channel Country, Maranoa, Warrego, into tomorrow.”
Assistant Commissioner Hollier said he was “absolutely” worried about forecasts of gusty and dry winds on Thursday.
“Absolutely, so what has been a constant in the last few days has been the wind and certainly the strength of the wind,” he said.
“If the wind was to then become further gusty that then increases the opportunity for the fire to certainly make a run and it would certainly be difficult to contain.
“The challenge is, of course, things are so dry. We haven’t seen it so dry, we’ve come off three years of a really good wet period.
“That southwestern part of the state certainly hasn’t had any significant rain since last year whereas other parts of the state have.
“They’re in a situation out there where I’ve said it only takes the slightest spark, with the wind, with the temperature, it certainly is the opportunity for a fire to make a run fairly quickly. So what we refer to as a wind-driven fire.”
Hot weather continues to make for extreme firefighting conditions, with the Bureau of Meteorology likely to declare a fire weather warning for the Central West, North West and Channel Country on Wednesday afternoon.
Tayla Shaw and Jennifer Hallinan both grew up in Tara and were extremely emotional at the thought of leaving their home.
They both took time out of their work days to attend the community meeting and listen to the current warnings.
“It’s very emotional and it’s quite scary,” Ms Hallinan said, holding back tears.
“I’ll stay at this stage and hope the retched wind goes away.”
Both Ms Hallinan and Ms Shaw work at the local Foodworks and have been feeding hungry fire fighters since Sunday night.
“We’ve been very busy catering for all the fire fighters and all the evacuation centres, we are doing 12-hour days,” Ms Shaw said.
“We’ve had bushfires but nothing this close to town.
“Where do you start? What do you even pack? We’ve never been in this situation before.
“There’s lots of people around here who have experienced this and they’ve been through this, but us in town, we haven’t.”
Another local, Pam, who runs the local community Facebook page, said the community were extremely scared.
A Tara resident told The Courier-Mail that it “feels like (the town) is being targeted”.
“This fire is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” the resident said.
“I used to be a volunteer firefighter in WA but this is something else.
“The firefighters and water bombers have been amazing.”
The resident said fireys would get one fire under control as a “heap more” were “popping up”.
Tara resident Sophie Bougoure who along with her family has been collecting firefighting foam from Dalby and taking it to fireys at the Tara airport during the series of blazes.
She expressed her exhaustion for the tragic events that keep on hitting the community.
“It’s completely and utterly devastating,” she said. “We can’t catch a break.”
Mrs Bougoure spoke of the tragic news that a man’s body had been found.
“You wake up this morning to news of a dead body and that’s absolutely devastating,” she said.
“While it’s not uncommon it’s not what you want to hear – You can rebuild a house but you can’t rebuild life, that’s the reality of it.”
The body was able to be recovered just after 11pm and will need to be forensically examined to identify the person, however police believe it to be the body of a missing adult male.
Western Downs Regional Council Mayor Paul McVeigh said community spirit remained high after visiting local centres housing evacuated residents.
“I shot out early this morning, had breakfast with those in the evacuation Centre in Tara and while there’s people in tears and everything, but the spirit is high,” he said.
“Even after the tragedy that we had last night, not that we know a lot of the detail in that space at the moment, but the community are fully aware this is an extremely dangerous fire.”
Mr McVeigh said there was still a lot of the fire to contain ahead of a “very, very tough day” with a 37C forecast and winds that are “chopping and changing”.
“That awareness of people in this situation that we need to make sure that we listen to what Queensland Fire and Emergency Services say,” he said.
“It’s a very, very strong community and can I say it’s probably about our whole community, those that have been impacted severely individually, and the support that’s coming from our community is amazing.”
State MP for Warrego Ann Leahy who has been sitting in state government parliament the last two days said the area needs to be declared a disaster zone.
“It’s probably a greater bushfire situation that Tara’s had in living memory,” she said.
“I’ll be certainly calling on the minister for the disaster declaration because I think that is needed very quickly.”
Apart from the Western Downs and Toowoomba regions, there are multiple other fire grounds, from the Scenic Rim; through Gympie and the Fraser Coast, Gladstone, Rockhampton, Mackay, Tablelands, Cook Shire and Aurukun; to Mount Isa in the west.
As of noon on Wednesday, there are multiple emergency “leave immediately” warnings in place for Tara and Wieambilla.
SCROLL DOWN FOR THE LATEST FIRE WARNINGS, ALERTS AND ADVICE FROM QFES
Evacuated residents of Tara, Kogan, Goranba and Weranga; and Cypress Gardens, Millmerran Downs and Millmerran Woods have been told it is still not safe to return.
Those residents, who were forced to flee from a massive bushfire on Monday, are likely to be kept away from their homes until at least Wednesday afternoon, with the authorities deeming the area still unsafe.
They included Lorraine Hodkinson, who ran from her home not expecting it to still be standing when she returned.
“All I could see was a big plume of smoke and flames, I had a bag packed and grabbed that, I got the dogs and we got out,” she said.
“I did not think our houses would have survived.”
Ms Hodkinson met up with other evacuees at Captains Mountain and said the mood was sombre.
“They had lost their homes and we thought we had lost ours,” she said.
Tara resident, Lenny Sava told Today on Tuesday his home had been “burnt to a cinder” after fires tore through his property.
Another resident on Tuesday told how the road their property sits on is “pretty much gone”.
Another resident in the path of one of multiple fires burning west of Toowoomba has told how he spent the first night in his new home peering out the window as an inferno engulfed the neighbourhood.
And a third, Chris Mansell from Timothy Rd in Wieambilla, took to social media to warn people that the street had been wiped out.
“Timothy Road is pretty much gone. I got out with my dogs and a few clothes. It was an inferno,” she said.
As a “wall of red” flames crept up through the back of her property, she said it was the abhorrent noise rumbling over the trees that stunned her and caused her to “buckle at the knees”.
Ms Mansell said the fire that ripped through her small community on Monday night was unlike anything she’s ever bared witness to and hopes to never experience again.
The 70-year-old wildlife carer said just after midnight she heard the “roar” of the fire and could feel the heat from the inferno coming towards her and her animals when she saw friends making their way down her long driveway to ensure she had a way out of her home and warn her to hurry.
Rural Fire Service Chief Superintendent Tony Johnstone on Tuesday said more than 400 volunteers and staff in 125 appliances were working hard to fight the fires.
“The aircraft are actually on scene helping to contain the fires but as you can appreciate with windy conditions today, spot fires are advancing probably 200m in front of the fire,” Supt Johnstone said.
Supt Johnstone said he was concerned about officer fatigue, but they had plenty of reserves ready to step in.
“That’s why we’ve actually implemented a number of fire bans. Fire bans are about limiting fire in the landscape, so we can actually manage fatigue as well.
“We’ve got really good resources, good connections with the government and other agencies.
Just before 3pm Wednesday principal of Tara Shire State College Belinda Walker announced the school would be closing until further notice after receiving advice from the Department of Education due to the ongoing bushfires.
A letter that was sent out with students said, “Parents are advised to collect your children if it is safe to do so, staff will remain on site until all children, including those travelling home by bus have left the school”.
Ms Walker also said she urged families to continue monitoring the situation through the local ABC radio or any media channels and follow the advice of QFES.
“Our focus at the moment is about controlling the fires, making sure the community is safe, getting around the fires.”
Supt Johnstone was hopeful the coming days would be favourable.
“We’re expecting that the hot dry weather is going to continue into the weekend, and we’ll see the crews currently work on the fires to try and contain the fires.”
Queensland Fire and Emergency Services has imposed a total fire ban for the Darling Downs and southwest Queensland.
The ban will be in place from 12.01am Tuesday until 23.59pm, Friday.
It affects residents in the Toowoomba, Southern Downs, Western Downs, Goondiwindi, Maranoa and Balonne Local Government Areas.
QFES also issued fire bans across the North Coast region.
Due to heightened fire conditions people at Bundaberg, Fraser Coast, Gympie, North Burnett, South Burnett and Cherbourg must adhere to the ban from 12.01am Wednesday until 23.59pm, Monday.
In total there are 33 local government areas with fire bans in place, most around the north of the state and the southwest.
Hot weather that has seen temperatures up to 8C above average will continue through Wednesday, the Bureau of Meteorology says, before a cool change is expected to sweep through as far east as Roma on Thursday and finally bring some relief to the southeast on Friday.
While it will bring cooler air, the winds could potentially create conditions for a fire weather warning about the Channel Country on Wednesday.
Fire bans: What you need to know
Under a local fire ban all open fires are prohibited and all Permits to Light Fire which have been issued in the designated areas have been suspended for the duration of the ban.
Power tools may be used during a local fire ban however QFES encourages people to use these with extreme care and ensure adequate equipment is available to extinguish any fire which may start.
This may include having a person available to watch out for any ignitions that occur.
There are 53 out of 77 local government areas with a current total fire ban, covering 69 per cent of the state.
The below LGAs have active bans until Friday October 27 at 11:59pm
Maranoa Regional
Mckinlay Shire
Toowoomba Regional
Balonne Shire
Cloncurry Shire
Southern Downs Regional
Diamantina Shire
Mt Isa City
Western Downs Regional
Boulia Shire
Goondiwindi Regional
Carpentaria Shire
Burke Shire
The below LGAs have active bans until Saturday October 28 at 11:59pm
Richmond Shire
Flinders Shire
Charters Towers Regional
The below LGAs have active bans until Monday October 30 at 11:59pm
Cook Shire
Bundaberg Regional
North Burnett Regional
Wujal Wujal Aboriginal Shire
Cassowary Coast Regional
Croydon Shire
Torres Shire
Douglas Shire
Hope Vale Aboriginal Shire
Northern Peninsula Area Regional Shire
Kowanyama Aboriginal Shire
Lockhart River Aboriginal Shire
Pormpuraaw Aboriginal Shire
Torres Strait Island Regional
Weipa Town
Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire
Mareeba Shire
Napranum Aboriginal Shire
Gympie Regional
Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire
Tablelands Regional
South Burnett Regional
Aurukun Shire
Mapoon Aboriginal Shire
Etheridge Shire
Cairns Regional
Fraser Coast Regional
The below LGAs have active bans until Wednesday November 1 at 11:59pm
Blackall Tambo Regional
Barcaldine Regional
Winton Shire
Banana Shire
Whitsunday Regional
Rockhampton Regional
Longreach Regional
Barcoo Shire
Mackay Regional
Livingstone Regional
Gladstone Regional
Isaac Regional
Central Highlands Regional
What to do in the path of a bushfire
– If you have a bushfire survival plan, follow it now.
– Prepare now so you can leave quickly if the bushfire gets close:
– Decide where you and the people you live with will go. This could be with family or a friend away from the fire. Plan how you will get there. Tell others where you will go.
– Charge mobile phones and power banks.
– Be ready to take your pets, pet food, pet lead or crate/carrier.
– Pack a bag with a mobile phone charger, enough clothes for five days, important documents (like ID, insurance papers, passports and photos), medicine, cash and keys.
– If you do not drive, call your support service, a family member or a friend to organise transport if you need to leave or want to leave.
– If you find it hard to move quickly, leaving now is your safest option.
– Keep medications close by.
– Move flammable items away from your house if you can.
– Help others if it’s safe to do so.
– Watch out for firefighters working in the area.
– Do not fly drones around the fire. Drones affect air operations.
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