Three missing people in fires burning on NSW south coast are feared dead, a day after one of the state’s volunteer firefighters died in a truck accident.
The three civilians are unaccounted for in NSW south coast townships of Cobargo and Belowra.
A volunteer firefighter who died when his truck flipped amid a “fire tornado” at a NSW-Victoria border town was expecting his first child in May.
Samuel McPaul died on Monday just before 6pm when the fire truck he was travelling in crashed at Jingellic, about 110km east of Albury in NSW.
An emotional Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons on Tuesday said the 10-tonne truck was hit by winds so extreme at the 26,000-hectare Green Valley fire that it flipped on its roof.
The 28-year-old, who was expecting his first child in May with his wife Megan who he married last year, died at the scene.
Mr Fitzsimmons later said three people – two in Cobargo and one in the remote Belowra – were on Tuesday afternoon missing and feared dead.
Cobargo, to the west of Bermagui, has been aflame for much of Tuesday, with multiple buildings on the main street on fire and RFS crews struggling to save properties. The town was evacuated earlier in the day.
The fire affecting Cobargo is the Badja Forest Rd fire near Cooma, which is rapidly moving eastward and was predicted to be among the blazes on Tuesday to expand most significantly, along with a fire in the Snowy Valleys.
Almost 100 blazes continue to burn across NSW, with dozens uncontained and eight on Tuesday at “emergency” level.
Extreme fire danger is forecast for the Southern Ranges, Illawarra and ACT on New Year’s Eve while surrounding regions – including Sydney, the Hunter and the far south coast – are set for severe fire danger.
The Clyde Mountain fire, to the south of the persistent 226,000ha Currowan blaze, is now impacting Batemans Bay. Massive traffic queues to escape the township have popped up on Beach Road.
Locals have begun evacuating to the beach and houses are reported destroyed, while embers are beginning to cause problems.
The Holbrook-based Mr McPaul’s social media accounts state he went to school in Broulee on the NSW south coast and took up animal science at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga. He was a representative basketball player and coached the sport in Holbrook, and worked as a mechanic.
Two male colleagues in the fire truck – aged 39 and 52 – were injured and taken to hospital. The 39-year-old was airlifted to The Alfred hospital in Melbourne and remains in a serious condition.
A command vehicle was also blown over, injuring one other firefighter.
On the same fire ground, two firefighters suffered burns to their faces and airways and were airlifted to Concord Hospital.
“I don’t think the comprehension has set in yet, of the enormity of the tragedy and the loss,” Mr Fitzsimmons told reporters on Tuesday.
“Crews described what they experienced as truly horrific, an extraordinary wind event, describing it as a fire tornado or the collapse of a pyro-convective column that had formed above the main fire front.
“That’s resulted in cyclonic-type winds that have moved across the fire ground and has literally lifted up a 10 or 12-tonne fire truck.”
Mr McPaul is the third NSW volunteer firefighter to die this bushfire season. Geoffrey Keaton, 32, and Andrew O’Dwyer, 36, died on December 19 when a tree hit their tanker as they were travelling southwest of Sydney.
Albury RFS district manager Patrick Westwood told reporters Mr McPaul was “a beautiful young man” who was fully equipped and trained and “doing everything right on the day”, but Monday’s events were unforeseeable.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, meanwhile, said in a statement on Tuesday he had spoken to Megan and that Mr McPaul was “the best of us”.
-AAP
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