Bushfires: ‘we won’t leave the village … this is where we live’

As a firefront ripped through the tiny NSW south coast town of Nerrigundah on New Year’s Eve, terrified residents ran to the one building that might save them.

Ron Threlfall and daughter Skye at the Nerrigundah NSW Rural Fire Service shed, above; the scene when survivors emerged from the Nerrigundah fire shed that saved their lives. Picture: Sean Davey

As a firefront ripped through the tiny NSW south coast town of Nerrigundah (pop: 25) on New Year’s Eve, terrified residents ran to the one building that might save them.

It was a tin shed — the local Rural Fire Service station — but it had just been fitted with a rooftop sprinkler system.

Nerrigundah RFS captain Ron Threlfall and his crew were putting out spot fires at a neighbour’s house when the firestorm jumped a ridge and hit the village.

“The whole valley just exploded,” he says. “The flames were 30m to 40m high. We jumped in the fire truck and were immediately enveloped in flames. We just drove.”

Threlfall’s two daughters, Skye, 22, and Siobhan, 25, were at home, hoping to defend the house before the fire reached the rest of the Nerrigundah.

Instead, the inferno hit the whole village at once. “I looked down at the fire shed and within a second it was surrounded by flames — the houses started exploding,” Skye says. “It’s not something you can fight.”

She and Siobhan just made it to the car and down to the RFS shed. The sprinklers were on, raining water down the sides of the building. “If we were a second later, we wouldn’t be here. Without the sprinklers, we’d be dead for sure … I thought we were going to die.”

Ron Threlfall has been fighting fires for 30 years but he’d never seen or felt anything like this. Twelve people made it into the shed. “We had flame coming in the door and the roller door pushing in on us,” he says. “If it wasn’t for the sprinkler system, we would have been wiped out. It was terrifying, the most frightening thing I’ve ever been through.”

The scene when survivors emerged from the Nerrigundah fire shed that saved their lives. Picture: Siobhan Threlfall

When the shaken survivors emerged from the shed, most of the village was gone. One neighbour, John Smith, 71, was dead, his body found near the house he’d been trying to save. Just five houses in Nerrigundah were standing.

Threlfall says every remote fire station and every home in high bushfire risk areas should have sprinklers installed.

Yet many in the village are having trouble getting payouts from insurance companies, and with strict building regulations.

Threlfall has only just settled with his insurance company but hasn’t got enough to rebuild, and code requirements for a new building would make it impossible anyway. But like every other Nerrigundah resident, he is adamant he won’t leave the village. “This is where we live,” he says.