Fire has ripped through the southern Perth suburb of Hammond Park, forcing the evacuation of a childcare centre, and three schools as WA swelters through a spring heatwave. The blaze reached emergency warning level and forced the closure of the freeway. But since, has been downgraded. Residents armed with hoses joined crews on the ground fighting the fire as it roared through suburban bush and parks.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 Roaring to life, fire ripped through suburbia.
00:07 Amid scorching winds, it moved quickly,
00:10 but so did the staff at this childcare centre,
00:13 rushing the children away from a grass-fed inferno over the back fence.
00:18 Crackling hot hell heat, yeah.
00:22 The embers have just pushed across, spot fires just going everywhere.
00:26 It's just crazy.
00:27 It was rapid. It just went from licking the fences
00:31 to all of a sudden blowing all the way down,
00:34 and it was just billowing smoke.
00:36 And I kept ringing the fire brigade saying,
00:38 "You've got to send every crew you've got in WA," cos it was bad.
00:42 (FIRE ROARS)
00:44 Crews did arrive in force, with aerial support
00:48 and 120 firefighters on the ground,
00:51 bolstered by locals, some with just boots and buckets.
00:57 Pretty scary.
00:58 I was ready to evacuate,
00:59 but thankfully all these local people helped out.
01:02 It's burned through our fence just a little bit more up there,
01:07 and the house behind us, they've burnt their caravan,
01:10 about half of it, and almost got the gasoline can on it too.
01:13 The 15-year-old home, because he was among hundreds of students,
01:16 forced to evacuate at lunchtime.
01:19 It's still about 37 degrees outside,
01:22 and with the wind still really strong,
01:24 parts of the bush that have already burnt
01:26 have been whipping up spot fires.
01:28 Embers also continue landing in little parts of unburnt vegetation.
01:33 This here, right next to the high school.
01:36 Thought to be accidental, the cause wasn't immediately clear,
01:40 but how things got so bad certainly was.
01:43 With much of the state sweltering through a heatwave,
01:46 hundreds of properties also lost power in unplanned outages,
01:50 while in Lancelin, shops were closed and homes got hot
01:54 due to a planned outage that couldn't be shifted.
01:57 It was a pity.
01:58 Maybe it could have been changed to another day,
02:01 but that didn't happen.
02:02 (ALL GROAN)
02:04 But even the dry heat couldn't dampen things for Levers,
02:07 celebrating the end of high school in WA's south.
02:10 out!
02:10 [BLANK_AUDIO]