Tony O’Gorman is the Dandaragan Shire president and says strong winds since Monday have helped spread the fires.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00The fire started on Monday at about 11 o'clock, I believe, and it's been burning solidly ever
00:08since.
00:09We've had really strong winds that were whipping around from the northeast down to the southwest,
00:15and today we've had particularly strong easterly winds.
00:18So it has moved the fire around a lot, and each time that the fire and emergency services
00:24people thought that they had a good containment line in place, the wind direction changed
00:29and changed the position of attack on the fire.
00:33So it's spread across, I think, about 48 kilometers is the front at the moment on the western
00:39side of the fire ground, and we've actually asked people in Cervantes to evacuate yesterday.
00:46We had our evacuation center open.
00:49We still have it open in Durian Bay, but unfortunately now we've had to ask people in Cervantes,
00:54if you haven't left you must stay in place.
00:56It is not safe to leave, so keep an eye on the emergency WA website for updates, and
01:05you'll see when you'll be able to move out of that area.
01:08Can you describe the country that it's burnt through so far?
01:13Look, it's pretty much scrubland that it's burnt through so far.
01:17I do believe it's hit one of our local stations, Nambung station, and has burnt in some of
01:23that area, but generally it's actually reserve land that it has been burning in, and it's
01:30quite difficult to fight.
01:33There are some, in the southern area of that, there are some unexploded ordnance because
01:37we've got the Lancelin training area just south of where we are, and the fireys can't
01:45obviously go in there in their on-ground vehicles, so they're attacking that fire with the fixed-wing aircraft.
01:54We have four of those fighting the fire at the moment, and we've got two helitanks fighting
01:59the fires.
02:00And we're about to receive two light air tankers coming from the eastern states.
02:06I believe they're already here in WA, and we're expecting them to be attacking the fire
02:12in the next hour or two.
02:13And we've just been seeing some images of the scrubland that it's been burning through.
02:17The scrub kind of looks pretty green, but the fire has been pretty intense, has it?
02:24The fire has been very intense, as I said, because the wind keeps changing.
02:30Fortunately for us, we've just completed an east-west runway at the Jurien Bay airport,
02:36and the firebombers have been able to land regardless of the wind direction.
02:40If this hadn't happened last year, we would not have been able to land.
02:44We had easterly winds.