Friday, 29 March 2024
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Local News

Working to stop blaze

Working to stop blaze

The Timbarra bushfire continues to burn, however a change in weather has opened a window of opportunity for emergency services to build containment lines and start extinguishing the blaze.

Horrendously hot and windy conditions on Friday saw the fire burn to more than 12,000 hectares and it is expected the blaze will continue to burn for some time.

Swifts Creek incident control manager, Peter West, said there is still a mountain of work to be done and is hopeful the milder conditions this week will allow fire fighters to establish containment lines.

“On Friday we had significant strong north westerly winds and the fire made a major run towards Buchan and near Gelantipy communities,” he said.

“Eventually the fire got to an area of about 12,000 hectares and eastern-most point was across Dawson Road.

“Obviously with a fire that size we have got a perimeter now of over 70 kilometres and a lot of work to do to try and contain that.

“We have significant resources, we have 200 people today (Sunday), seven aircraft and 26 dozers and we are working very hard to look at where we can contain the fire and back burn.

“On Saturday night a lot of work went into the south-west corner to see if we could back burn out to strong containment lines and we will work our way around the fire.

“A key area of concern for us is the eastern flank where we are quite close to the Gelantipy Road and communities. Helicopters will be working primarily in this area today (Sunday) to try and quieten down and try and get it black as we can so that when we do come out our options of back burning we are doing it in the safest possible manner.

“The good news is the next five day we are expecting reasonable weather, even the possibility of rain on Thursday, so we’ve got a window to do work around the fire, but we’ve got a lot to do.

Mr West said while the fire covers a significant area, there hasn’t been any significant losses.

“We had some ground observers out on Saturday to check on damage and we’ve had some reported losses in terms of caravans and sheds and about 2km of fencing. We’ve had no reports yet of livestock lost with the fire,” he said.

There was a community meeting held in Buchan at 6pm last night where we incident controllers explained where they are at with the fire. They were hoping to get some input from people in terms of options with back burning in some areas.


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