NSW bushfires: Heatwave set to fan fires, RFS chief loses home in Gospers Mountain blaze
Firefighters warn they won’t be able to contain devastating bushfires before severe heatwave hits.
Daytime temperatures in NSW and the ACT are expected to exceed 40C from Tuesday through to Saturday, while in the western half of the state the mercury is set to top 45C.
The heatwave will likely spark an elevated fire risk across NSW, the Bureau of Meteorology and NSW Health warned on Monday.
Desperate race to prepare
NSW Rural Fire Service deputy commissioner Rob Rogers says firefighters will not be able to contain every blaze before conditions deteriorate.
“We will do whatever we can to prepare communities. People should be under no illusion, we won’t contain the fires by the time the weather deteriorates later this week,” he told Nine’s Today Show on Tuesday morning.
“I think Wednesday, Thursday are looking like problem days. Saturday is looking potentially even worse.
I think people need to brace themselves in those areas for what’s potentially to come.”
About 2000 firefighters are battling a total of 115 fires continue to burn across NSW, with 59 still to be contained, according to the RFS.
Already fire has consumed almost three million hectares of land.
Total fire bans remain in place as firefighters continue to work on backburning containment lines.
WA threat eases
Western Australia’s bushfire emergency has eased with authorities downgrading warnings for a string of major fires on Tuesday.
A fire to the north of Perth is now a watch-and-act situation while others have been reduced to bushfire advice messages for local residents.
Authorities say the fire at New Norcia could still pose a threat to lives and homes, with that blaze contained but not controlled. About 50 firefighters remain on the scene and the fire has already destroyed about 7500 hectares.
Two other fires, one which threatened lives and homes at Woodridge, Seatrees and Breakwater Estates north of Perth for several days and one at Collie, southeast of the city, are now advice messages only.
Fire chief loses home at ground zero
Almost 20 buildings have been razed — including the home of a NSW Rural Fire Service captain — after firefighters lost control of a tactical backburning operation in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, on Sunday and the blaze raced out of control on Sunday night.
At 4am, all fires in NSW are now at Advice. 115 fires continue to burn with 59 still to be contained. Firefighers have been working hard overnight protecting homes and backburning to deepen containment lines, ahead of increasing fire dangers. #nswrfs #nswfires pic.twitter.com/WjMJJuEyBv
— NSW RFS (@NSWRFS) December 16, 2019
The devastating damage came as RFS crews tried in vain to contain the sprawling blaze at Gospers Mountain, northwest of Sydney, which has already burned down 380,000 hectares in the worst bushfires gripping NSW.
The major firefront — along with six adjoining blazes — has been dubbed a “mega-blaze” and now extends from the Lithgow area in the west, through the Hawkesbury area towards the central coast in the east.
RFS inspector Ben Shepherd praised the efforts of Mount Wilson and Mount Irvine fire captain Beth Raines, who was still battling blazes with her RFS crew on Monday despite losing her house in the rogue backburn fire.
Her home was one of two destroyed at Mount Wilson in the fire, while a further six were understood to have been lost at nearby Mount Tomah, along with about 10 buildings in the village of Bilpin.
Mr Shepherd said Ms Raines’s fellow firefighters were so distraught after they lost control of the backburn they had to be personally counselled by RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.
“All that work they had been doing to offer protection to that community, to see that fire go up, a number of them are just eating themselves up over this,” Mr Shepherd said.
“Some of the footage from the firefighters, you can see them standing between the houses and 60- to 70-metre-high flames. This is exactly what they were trying to avoid. It’s just been devastating.”
He said the land was now so dry and weather conditions so volatile firefighters were having to manage unprecedented risks with backburning — the only strategy that could at least help slow down the progress of the firewalls now bearing down on communities across the state.
“We have so much fire on the landscape, and now we are about to get the horror trifecta, high temperatures, strong winds and very dry air,” he said.
Mr Shepherd confessed to a sense of “uneasiness and nervousness” at the worsening weather conditions over the next week, saying the local firefighters would now have to steel themselves for the coming week and “keep focus” to protect the community as best they could, given there were at least 100 homes directly in the fire path. “We need to move forward because the firewall is now bearing down on the areas between Windsor and Lithgow,” he said.
RFS senior deputy captain David Pursell was assisting the backburning mission at Mount Wilson when it was overtaken by weather conditions. “It moved so quickly because it was so hot and the ground was just so dry,” Mr Pursell said. “People think fire comes across like a firefront, but it’s actually a massive black cloud with red embers inside, that just comes through and creates spot fires all at once.”
Fires this season have left six people dead and 724 homes destroyed nationwide.
With AAP
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