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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Christopher Knaus (now) and Ben Doherty (earlier)

Worst fire threat since 2003, ACT chief minister says – as it happened

Orroral fire in Namadji national park
Smoke rises from the Orroral fire in Namadji national park Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

That’s where we will leave our coverage for tonight. Thanks for sticking with us. The last update we received from ESA was that there was no change from the advice it issued at 10pm, namely that there is no immediate threat to properties in Canberra, but there are spot fires threatening Tharwa.

For those in affected areas, please follow updates from the ACT Emergency Services Agency on Twitter and Facebook.

Further updates are available from ACT Policing. For road closures, follow ACT Policing’s traffic team.

The local emergency broadcaster is ABC Canberra radio. You can listen online or via radio. They will be transmitting emergency advice relayed from the ESA.

Spot fires threaten Tharwa, warnings for Canberra's south

We’ve just moved past 10.20pm, so let’s take recap on the events of the evening:

  • an out-of-control bushfire burning in the mountainous Namadgi National Park, south of Canberra, has almost quadrupled in size in a single day, threatening the small village of Tharwa, and prompting warnings to residents of the city’s southernmost suburbs.
  • at 10pm, the fire was about 8,106 hectares in size. It was 2,581 hectares at 12.30pm.
  • the fire was ignited yesterday by a military helicopter conducting surveillance, which was using landing lights to safely land in the smoky conditions in the Orroral Valley, in Namadgi. The landing light created enough heat to start a grass fire, which quickly spread out of control.
  • spot fires are starting well ahead of the main fire front. At one point, they were igniting 5kms ahead of the front. The fire was behaving erratically and had created its own weather system.
  • Flames atop the mountains were clearly visible to residents across the city, prompting widespread concern, particularly for those who lived through the 2003 disaster. Authorities said the fires that could be seen were spot fires, rather than the main fire front.
  • Properties were under threat in Tharwa, 10 minutes south of Canberra’s southernmost suburb, where fire crews were attempting to put out spot fires. Residents there were told to evacuate about 4pm. They were told it was too late to leave about 4.30pm. The advice remains that residents in Tharwa shelter and do not attempt to drive. Firefighters are on scene.
  • Firefighters were also deployed into Canberra’s southernmost suburb of Banks as a precaution. Containment lines were being constructed to protect the southern suburbs and doorknocking was taking place to communicate reliable information to residents in Banks, Conder, and Gordon.
  • At 10pm, there was no immediate threat to homes in Canberra. But the advice warned residents in Banks, Conder, and Gordon to activate their bushfire survival plans, pack up essentials, and closely monitor conditions. Residents in Calwell and Theodore were told to monitor conditions.
  • An easterly change brought stronger wind gusts to the fireground a short time ago. The change caused wind gusts of up to 45km/h. Those winds were expected to remain for an hour or two, before subsiding and bringing cooler temperatures and increased humidity, which will aid the firefighting effort.
  • Military surveillance aircraft continue to monitor the fire and provide intelligence to emergency services about the movement of the fire and any threat to homes.
  • Authorities do not expect the fire to be put out by Friday, when hot temperatures and winds will return.
  • Evacuation centres have been set up at Erindale College in Wanniassa and Dickson College in the inner-north. Exhibition Park is also open and can be used to store horses.
  • Heavy smoke is expected tonight. It will linger until tomorrow and possibly longer. ACT Health issued an alert and urged people not to engage in unnecessary physical activity.

Updated

The easterly change we mentioned earlier is currently hitting the fireground. It is bringing with it wind gusts of 45km/h.

This will be the strongest winds we will see for the rest of the evening. The Bureau of Meteorology’s Rebecca Tamitakahara is speaking to the ABC right now.

We are still seeing those gusty winds for an hour or so following the change, but we are then expecting to see those conditions ease back. Temperatures are expected to drop to the early 20s, and they are expected to drop further into the night, into the teens.

We mentioned a little earlier that this fire will not be put out before Friday. Tamitakahara gives us a taste of the worsening conditions in the latter half of this week and on the weekend. Winds will also pick back up.

We do have another cold front approaching NSW and the ACT later this week and this weekend. What that means is we will see those warm temperatures persist and get even hotter, particularly on Friday and Saturday.

Updated

Professional photographer Martin Ollman has just posted a timelapse of the Orroral Valley fire to Twitter, showing its behaviour from afternoon to evening. It’s quite incredible.

These shots show Canberra’s southern town centre of Tuggeranong, dwarfed by flames and smoke. This town centre is about 20 minutes drive from the village of Tharwa.

Updated

The latest emergency advice says there is a spot fire burning near Tharwa, north of Spring Station Creek. Firefighters are on scene supported by a dozer.

The total fire size is now 8,106 hectares.

The ACT Emergency Services Agency commissioner, Georgeina Whelan, is speaking now. She says the fires visible to Canberrans are not the main fire front. They are spot fires, which are well ahead of the main front.

She assures residents that aviation assets remain airborne and are keeping a close eye on the front.

For our residents in Banks, Conder and Gordon, you may have already received a doorknock from SES, ACT Policing, or a defence member. That is not to trigger an evacuation. The doorknock is to remain engaged with our community, provide you with advice, and respond to any questions you may have.

This shot from a little earlier, as the sun went down, paints a scary picture. The ridgeline is ablaze.

A reminder, though, that there is a fair bit of country between the mountains and Canberra’s southern fringes. The ESA says there is no current threat to properties in Canberra, only in Tharwa, the village in the foothills, where spotting is occurring.

Just a reminder that the southern suburbs of Canberra are not yet being evacuated. Authorities are doorknocking there, but they are not evacuating people.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has urged Canberrans to stay safe, while noting Australian defence force personnel are helping local firefighters.

An interesting aside, Morrison is speaking at the National Press Club tomorrow. An auspicious time for him to be speaking. I do hope he fields some pointed questions about the fire that will be still raging about 40 minutes to the south of the NPC, and the many others that have marked this unprecedented fire season.

Updated

Fire will be active until Friday: fire chief

Joe Murphy, the ACT’s rural fire service chief, said the gusty conditions brought by the easterly change this evening will enliven the far western side of the fire, which is in the rugged terrain near Orroral Valley. But he warns:

It is very dry out there. This is a heavily timbered area. This is a very dangerous fire for our firefighters and we will not be compromising their safety to fight this fire.

Murphy said the greatest concern remains with the village of Tharwa. But he said a firefighting strike team is at the village, as is a dozer, and a military aircraft is helping to provide surveillance.

He said the fire will still be going on Thursday and Friday, when elevated fire dangers will hit the ACT with high temperatures and stronger winds.

That is not good news. The forecast for Thursday is 37C and Friday is 40C.

Murphy said the fire is too big to put out before then.

The latest emergency warning from the ACT Emergency Services Agency says the fire is starting to spot near Tharwa village.

It is now 7,912 hectares in size. That means it’s more than doubled in size today. The situation remains the same for those in the southern suburbs of Canberra (Banks, Conder and Gordon). You should activate your bushfire plans and monitor conditions closely.

Updated

As the light fades, we’re getting a new perspective on the fire burning in the mountains. The flames are lighting up the night sky and illuminating the ridgeline.

A reminder that the emergency services agency is saying there is currently no threat to property in Canberra suburbs.

Residents in Tharwa, a small village 10 minutes south of the southernmost Canberra suburb, have been urged to shelter in the face of the emergency-level fire. The latest information suggests spot fires are igniting near Tharwa.

Residents in Banks and Gordon are being told to activate their bushfire survival plans and closely monitor information from emergency services.

Updated

We’ve just had a brief update from the Bureau of Meteorology. Canberra will experience a wind change in the next hour or two. An easterly is going to come through. That will make things difficult on the fire ground.

The change is expected to bring wind gusts up to 35km/h to 40km/h.

“It hasn’t quite reached the fire ground yet ... but it is expected to move through in the next hour,” meteorologist Rebecca Kamitakahara told the ABC. “As we go later into the evening we will see those winds slow back, and the humidity increase.”

There is some good news. The change will bring lower temperatures.

“Following that we will see an easing trend in the winds through the night and they will become quite light into the morning,” Kamitakahara said.

Tomorrow, temperatures will hit about 36C. But the wind will not be quite as severe, so the fire conditions should ease.

Updated

For those in affected areas, please follow updates from the ACT Emergency Services Agency on Twitter and Facebook.

Also ACT Police, and for road closures go here.

What we know about the fire so far:

  • The bushfire began in Namadgi national park, a rugged mountainous area in the ACT’s south.
  • The fire was ignited by heat from a military helicopter’s landing light. The helicopter was in the area assisting with surveillance and land clearing operations. Defence says it has stopped using the lights and is investigating the incident.
  • The bushfire has now burned through nearly 8000 hectares. It is threatening rural areas in the south of the territory, including the village of Tharwa, which sits in the foothills. Tharwa residents are being told it is too late to leave and to take shelter.
  • The fire is erratic and out-of-control. It is spotting 5km ahead of the fire front. The fire has created its own weather pattern and is burning to the north-east and east. At one point, the fire was growing 400 hectares every hour. A total fire ban is in place and there is low humidity and moderate winds.

For a story on the bushfire threat, and the heatwave set to hit NSW and Victoria, see:

Updated

The sunset over Canberra this evening is beautiful, in a haunting, depressing kind of way.

Heavy smoke in Canberra until midday Wednesday

We’re expecting heavy smoke throughout Canberra this evening and tomorrow. The smoke is expected to come into the city from 8.30pm and linger until midday. ACT Health has issued a health alert. It says:

The ACT Health Directorate has upgraded health advice to the community due to the deterioration of air quality across Canberra from the heavy smoke.

The smog, which is impacting the ACT from fires across the border, is extremely thick and expected to linger in the coming days. Conditions may also be intensified by the hot temperatures forecast.

Updated

A request has been made for assistance from New South Wales Rural Fire Service. Murphy said the size of the active fire has made that necessary.

They’re providing some support to the ACT tomorrow, I don’t know how big it is at this stage.

Murphy urges Canberrans to be “alert, not alarmed”.

Rural Fire Service chief officer Joe Murphy says wind conditions have eased slightly this evening. He told the ABC:

We’ve seen a small drop in wind speeds, which will calm the fire down a little bit.

Emergency services are hitting it with everything. They are continuing to water bomb. Containment lines have been built. Firefighters have been pre-positioned in the south of Canberra.

Murphy said:

We’re playing it safe, we’re playing it very, very safe.

Murphy says the smoke plume will still be visible to Canberra tomorrow morning.

Now is the time to be listening to what we are saying and considering you actions, it really is, but there is no evacuation order for Banks and Gordon at this time.

We’ve just got a new emergency alert from the ACT’s emergency services agency.

The fire is now 7,912 hectares in size, so it’s still spreading. There is no evacuation order yet for Banks and Gordon, the southernmost suburbs.

Flames come over the crest of the mountains

Flames have now come over the crest of the mountains and are clearly visible to residents in the south of the city.

One woman from Wanniassa, a southern suburb, has described the scene. She has been watching the fire all day from the vantage of the hills in Wanniassa. She tells ABC Canberra the plumes of smoke rising from the mountains resembled “atomic clouds” earlier today. Now, she says:

The sky’s very dark, sort of purple and black with the orange behind it... I can see the flames along the ridge, Mt Tennant and along other mountains.

Updated

It’s Christopher Knaus here, taking over from Ben Doherty. I’ll take you through the evening as the bushfire threat continues in Canberra’s southernmost suburbs.

Waterbombing is under way in the hills to Canberra’s south.

Updated

Many Canberrans, like me, will be remembering the horrific events of 2003 as they anxiously watch the bushfire currently burning in the mountains.

The 2003 fires burnt for days in difficult terrain in the ACT’s national parks – including Namadgi, the site of the current fire – before moving quickly into heavily populated suburbs on Canberra’s south-western fringes.

Dry lightning lit multiple fires in Kosciuszko and Namadgi national parks on 8 January 2003, but the behaviour had been predictable for days and of no major concern.

But 10 days later, on 18 January 2003, the fires combined, broke containment lines and were fanned by 65km/h wind gusts towards the city. Temperatures were above 37C and humidity was low.

To give you an idea how quickly the fire tore into the suburbs, the then chief minister Jon Stanhope declared a state of emergency at 2.45pm. Just 15 minutes later, the bushfire hit the suburb of Duffy.

The fire quickly spread through the suburbs of Chapman, Kambah, Rivett, Higgins, Hawker and Cook.

Almost 500 homes were lost. Four people died and 435 were injured.

The speed of the fire was so great that it baffled bushfire researchers.

“It was a pretty big shock, ’cause I mean, there’s nothing really in the literature which suggests the fire should spread that fast, or could spread that fast,” Jason Sharples, an expert who studied the fire, told the ABC in 2013.

Research would later show the fire had created its own weather system, which had developed a fire tornado, leading to extreme wind speeds and huge unpredictability in behaviour.

Updated

Extraordinary shot from Canberra Times photographer Sitthixay Ditthavong:

Updated

The Canberra Deep Space Network at Tidbinbilla is not currently under direct threat from the fire, but will be closed for the next few days.

The latest update says the fire is now more than 6,000 hectares, and is running north-east and east. It is out of control.

Updated

The view looking south-west from Mt Ainslie. In the foreground you can see the Australian War Memorial, Anzac Parade, Lake Burley Griffin, and parliament house.

Summary:

A quick summary of what we know about the fire so far:

  • The bushfire began in Namadgi national park, a rugged mountainous area in the ACT’s south.
  • The fire was ignited by heat from a military helicopter’s landing light. The helicopter was in the area assisting with surveillance and land clearing operations. Defence says it has stopped using the lights and is investigating the incident.
  • The bushfire has now burned through more than 4,600 hectares. It is threatening rural areas in the south of the territory, including the village of Tharwa, which sits in the foothills. Tharwa residents are being told it is too late to leave and to take shelter.
  • The fire is erratic and out-of-control. It is spotting 5km ahead of the fire front. The fire has created its own weather pattern and is burning to the north-east and east. At one point, the fire was growing 400 hectares every hour. A total fire ban is in place and there is low humidity and moderate winds.
  • Authorities expect the fire to begin starting spot fires within 1km of the ACT’s southernmost suburb, Banks, this evening. Residents in Banks are not yet being told to leave. They are being told to monitor conditions closely and activate their bushfire survival plans, as are residents of neighbouring Calwell, Gordon, and Conder.
  • Conditions will deteriorate into the evening. Winds are expected to strengthen, reaching gusts of up to 40km/h.
  • The ACT chief minister, Andrew Barr, has described the conditions as the worst since 2003, when a bushfire that began in the mountains swept through the city, destroying 470 houses and killing four.
  • Across the city, thick plumes of smoke can be seen rising from the mountains.
  • Evacuation centres have been opened at Dickson college, in the inner-north of the city, and Erindale College in Wanniassa to the south. Exhibition Park is also open for those with horses. Further evacuation centres are being prepared this evening.

Updated

These posts offer a sense of the size of the Orroral Valley fire as it threatens Canberra.

Updated

Police say they’ve been working for weeks on evacuation plans for a situation precisely like the one unfolding in Canberra.

The chief police officer Ray Johnson said Banks and the other suburbs in Canberra’s south, particularly Conder, Gordon, and Calwell, were not yet being evacuated, but should pay close attention to the bushfire and information provided by emergency services.

“It isn’t, at this point, an evacuation. It is a preparation and giving you advice about what you might choose to do,” Johnson said.

“If the need for an evacuation occurs, I’d like to provide some comfort that considerable work has been done to prepare. We’ve had a number of weeks working very closely with ESA on evacuation planning, thinking through various scenarios on how we would execute such plans.

“So we are well placed to support the community should you choose to vacate and should you choose to evacuate.”

These are the current road closures for the bushfire threat, as advised by ACT police:

  • Tharwa Road closed at Knoke and Pocket Avenues, Banks
  • Angle Crossing Road at Monaro Highway (NB Monaro Highway is open (contrary to some reports))
  • Tidbinbilla Rd at Point Hutt Crossing
  • Sunshine/Smith Roads
  • Naas Road at the Namadgi Visitors Centre
  • Boboyan Road at the ACT/NSW border
  • Tidbinbilla/Point Hut

The indefatigable Lyndal Curtis tells us a water bomber is in the air:

The fire was started by an Australian defence force helicopter

We’ve just learned that the Canberra bushfire ignited due to heat from a landing light on a military helicopter, a MRH-90 Taipan, which was conducting operations in Namadgi national park.

The helicopter landed as part of reconnaissance work. Aircraft had been transporting people to clear land in Namadgi so that firefighting strike teams could be deployed to combat the fire.

The crew of six on board were lucky to get out. The aircraft was damaged but they were able to flee.

Lieutenant-general Greg Bilton said the ADF had stopped using the lights and was investigating the circumstances.

“When the helicopter landed yesterday afternoon, we believe that the landing light, which is lit on the aircraft as a safety precaution in difficult circumstances, such as a smoky environment, we believe that created enough heat to set the grass on fire,” he said.

“That fire it was initiated and grew rapidly. The aircraft sustained some damage while it was on the ground. It was then able to recover and return to Fairbairn [the emergency services headquarters].”

Updated

The ACT emergency services agency issued an emergency warning to residents of Tharwa at 4.30pm saying it was too late to leave and to seek shelter immediately.

“The fire may pose a threat to all lives directly in its path,” the advice said. “People in these suburbs are in danger and need to seek immediate shelter as the fire approaches.”

The fire is also threatening properties in rural areas on Boboyan, Apollo, and Top Naas roads.

Residents in those areas are also being told it is too late to leave.

Tharwa is about 10 minutes drive from Canberra’s southernmost suburb, Banks.

Residents in Banks and neighbouring suburbs Conder, Gordon, and Calwell were told to monitor the situation closely. At 5pm, they were told to activate their bushfire survival plans.

This is the latest alert from the ACT ESA:

Updated

Good evening, we are following developments with the bushfire currently threatening southern Canberra.

The ACT government says this is the worst fire threat to Canberra since the 2003 fires devastated the city, claiming 470 houses and four lives.

The fire is currently threatening Tharwa, a village of about 80 people to the immediate south of Canberra.

Residents there have been warned it is too late to leave and that they should seek shelter.

Updated

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