Emergency warning in place as blaze continues to threaten Cervantes

Tony O’Gorman is the Dandaragan Shire president and says strong winds since Monday have helped spread the fires.

Transcript

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.