By Sarah Brookes and Aja Styles
Two New South Wales refrigerated freight trucks have caught fire at Western Australia’s border checkpoint with South Australia.
The Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics trucks and three trailers were on Eyre Highway near Border Village Roadhouse just outside Eucla on the SA side of the border when the unusual fire began at midday, according to the Department of Fire and Emergency Services.
Firefighters spent a hellish night fighting fires in Denmark and Bridgetown.Credit: DFES
It remained active for about three hours, with warnings about thick smoke impacting driving visibility, as Eucla volunteer firefighters tackled the blaze.
A Scott’s spokesperson said there were no injuries or fatalities and the cause of the fire was still being investigated.
The truck fires come on the back of food supply issues affecting WA due to the South Australian train line being wrecked by floods, while bushfires simultaneously rage across three regions of WA.
DFES has been inundated with calls as they battle the state’s “unprecedented” bushfire emergency, with one warning covering an area six times the size of Perth.
As homes and businesses went up in smoke, residents fled, schools closed, and NSW sent reinforcements to exhausted firefighters, authorities said the fires’ intensity and rapid escalation pointed to changes in the climate.
Four fires burning across WA have reached emergency level over the past 48 hours, two in rural towns in the state’s Wheatbelt, 250 kilometres east of Perth, and two in the tourist towns of Denmark and Bridgetown in the Great Southern and South West.
DFES Deputy Commissioner Craig Waters said on Sunday just having three at emergency level at once was “unprecedented”.
“It’s been an extremely testing weekend for hundreds of career and volunteer firefighters across the state,” he said.
The South West bushfires. Credit: DFES/Evan Collis
Four homes plus other buildings were lost in the fire in Denmark, ordinarily a cool and wet region, which doubled in size in one night between Friday and Saturday.
One home was lost in Bridgetown, with a man in hospital with injuries sustained trying to protect his home, and numerous other facilities including the golf club, Shire depot and waste facility. In addition, fire reaching a timber treater caused the release of toxic materials forcing nearby residents to evacuate.
In the large Wheatbelt town of Narrogin there are already reports of damaged property, significant damage to a piggery and large numbers of cattle impacted, with the fire razing 40,000 hectares already in the Shires of Quairading, Corrigin, Kondinin and Kulin since being reported at 9am Sunday.
Multiple Wheatbelt schools were closed on Monday including Corrigin District High School, Babakin Primary School, Kondinin Primary School and Kulin District High School with a community meeting to be held at Corrigin Town Hall.
The fires in Bridgetown and Denmark have been brought under control in the past 24 hours and DFES Commissioner Darren Klemm said the priority for Monday was the Wheatbelt areas around Corrigin, Bruce Rock and Narrogin.
He said the Wheatbelt fires had spread quickly because of the openness of the fuel in the grazing and cropping district; at one point on the fire at Bruce Rock was 35 kilometres long.
“The wind can get into the fuel and then get you rapid spread, and it makes it so difficult for firefighters to pull it up,” he said.
“There were times we had to pull out our large air tanker fleet because the wind was too strong which shows just how challenging the conditions were.
“There is still a lot of work to be done on those fires, they are not as advanced in terms of control as Denmark and Bridgetown.
“Once we get in control of these fires there will be weeks of work to make everything safe.”
Reinforcements from NSW will be targeted at the Wheatbelt fires and there are COVID-19 precautions in place around their deployment.
Mr Klemm said rapid damage assessment teams would finish surveying the damage in Denmark, where the fire has now been downgraded to a Watch and Act alert, later on Monday.
Police did not believe the fire in Denmark was suspicious, but the Arson Squad is in the Bridgetown fire zone to investigate.
Mr Klemm said climate change was contributing to the increasing intensity of fires in WA.
“The climate is changing,” he said.
“Denmark is the most southern part of the state and the fire doubled in size on Friday night.
“That is just not normal.
“The intensity of the fire points us towards that things are changing.”
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