Devastated residents of a tiny northern NSW town have told how they feared they would die as a wall of fire closed in late on Tuesday.
One man told the ABC he messaged his mother to tell her he loved her as flames licked underneath the door of his Rappville house.
“I’ve got nothing. I’ve worked hard for a lot of my stuff, now it’s all gone,” he said.
“I’ve only got what’s on me, and my dog.
“It was crazy, it was intense, it was really bad.”
Up to 30 homes in the area, which is south of Casino, were destroyed or seriously damaged as several bushfires raged within about 100 kilometres of each other on Tuesday.
On Wednesday morning, the NSW Rural Fire Service said the fire had ripped through Rappville, which is home to about 250 people.
Other buildings, including the town hall, had also been lost.
“I’ve lost the bloody sheds, the house, lost everything,” Rappville resident Danny Smith said.
#NSWRFS Building Impact Assessment teams will inspect areas impacted by yesterday's bush fires across northern NSW. At this stage, there appears to be a significant number of homes and other buildings destroyed. We're working to get residents back when safe to do so. #nswfires pic.twitter.com/zyQ2ULKVN6
— NSW RFS (@NSWRFS) October 8, 2019
More than 40 bushfires were still burning across NSW on Wednesday, 13 of them yet to be contained. More than 500 firefighters are battling blazes.
RFS Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers said two out-of-control fires – at Drake near Tenterfield and at Busbys Flat near Rappville – had joined together to form one large blaze.
That combined fire – at a “watch and act” alert level on Wednesday afternoon – was burning across more than 90,000 hectares.
But firefighters were aided by cooler local conditions – although not for much longer.
“We’re in this cycle of bad weather; we get some easing days and then we’re back into it. We’ve already lost 44 homes up until these fires, and if we’ve lost that (30) number more, it’s going to be a really bad fire season,” Mr Rogers told the Seven Network.
John Duncan, 83, lost his home in the Busbys Flat blaze – and is only alive thanks to social media, according to his daughter Carol.
Ms Duncan has set up a GoFundMe page to help her father, who she says “lost everything except the clothes he was wearing”. By Wednesday afternoon, the page had raised more than $14,000.
Ms Duncan said her father had moved to the area from Canberra after the devastating 2004 bushfires, “not wanting to go through it again”.
She said firefighters responded to a tweet asking for advice and went to his home to rescue him and his partner, Cass. They had taken shelter in a shed (“It’s steel, and steel doesn’t burn,” Mr Duncan said).
“The RFS people who went and got my dad and his partner OUT OF THE SHED thanks to Twitter … saved my Dad’s life,” an emotional Ms Duncan said on Wednesday.
How a tweet saved @carolduncan's dad as the #NSWfires tore towards his home last night.
John and his partner Cassie were hiding in his back shed before Carol desperately reached out to @NSWRFS. They tracked them down and took them to safety.
Soon after the shed was gone. pic.twitter.com/PNgsr9ScdU
— News Breakfast (@BreakfastNews) October 8, 2019
An evacuation centre has been set up at St Mary’s Catholic College in Casino for those who were forced to flee the Busbys Flat fire.
It is also expected to rain across northern NSW on Friday.
Meanwhile, fire crews have all but extinguished a “fast and furious” blaze that destroyed a house in south-east Queensland.
The flames that ripped through Laidley, in the Lockyer Valley west of Brisbane, on Tuesday afternoon are out, but burnt out logs are still smouldering.
The inferno flared up with little warning, catching firefighters by surprise as they were attending a fire at nearby Thornton.
The Laidley fire burned right up to the fence line in one subdivision.
One family’s home was destroyed, the fierce flames melting a boat and ute in the yard.
Lockyer Valley Mayor Tanya Milligan was monitoring other fires in the region when she got a phone call asking if she knew the fire was in her street.
She said she quickly arranged for her pets to be collected, and had not yet been home to assess the damage.
“I’m guessing it will be full of soot and will be a bit of a mess and will stink,” she told ABC radio.
“It was fast and furious and somewhat hectic.”
She praised the efforts of emergency crews.
“We’re really blessed that we only had one loss of one home,” she said.
“It certainly could have been a lot worse.”
Twenty fires are still burning across Queensland, with cooler temperatures also easing conditions there.
Fire crews are still battling a blaze at Glen Rock in the Lockyer Valley. Some residents who were evacuated on Tuesday have not yet been able to return home.
No properties have been damaged there.
-with AAP
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