TWO fires burning in Wyperfeld National Park will continue to be of concern for some days with firefighters pushing deeper into the park to tackle fronts burning in difficult to access terrain.
The two fires, one which started at south of Boinka on Friday, and the other that’s a result of lighting strikes from a weather system created by the Boinka fire, have been causes for concern for authorities during the past three days.
Both fire fronts have had watch and act – prepare to leave warnings active at times, although both are now listed as watch and act – threat is reduced – monitor conditions.
The downgrading of the fires’ threat level was in part to good work and good luck, according to Forest Fire Management Victoria’s incident controller for fires in the Mallee, Les Vearing.
“The big fire that started south of Boinka and burnt into the Wyperfeld National Park has still got a lot of running edge,” he said.
“The northern edge of it is pretty much contained, where it’s of come out onto the park boundary and where we’d put some control lines in.
“The southern and western edges are still burning freely at the moment, but it’s not moving very far, so we’ve got bulldozers working away around that.
“There’s probably still a couple of days’ work to get all the way around that as it’s such a big fire.
“It’s in a big jumble-dune country, which is not that easy to track around.
“We’ve still got probably another, probably 30 kilometres of running edge to contain with that big fire.”
With the fire pushing north-east on Friday afternoon after a wind change, it created it’s own weather event that proved a blessing and a curse.
“The eastern side, the side facing Patchewollock, some of that’s gone out,” Mr Vearing said.
“It’s really interesting, when the fire was going crazy on Friday we had a massive big convection column developed and it made its own weather.
“It actually produced a big downpour of rain and put out some of the fire heading to Patchewollock out.
“But worse, it produced its own lightning as well, and started two more fires to the, to the southeast it’s caused us a bit bigger headache there, but so some of the, the, uh, side facing Patchewollock.
Mr Vearing said the Boinka fire had so far burned out about 50,000 hectares, while the fire it cause, which was originally two fires that subsequently joined together about 23kms south west of Patchewollock had affected 2000 hectares of mostly national park.
“We’re calling it the, the Freeway Track fires,” he said. “There were two fires which have since merged and part of it ran into a previous fire we had a few weeks ago.
“Those two fires have merged and they’re the ones causing us the most grief at the moment, because with the southerly winds they’re pushing into unburnt country.
“We’ve got three bulldozers working on that, at the moment, and six firebombers. We’re just, just holding it at the moment.
“If I was a betting man on what was our chance of keeping it in touch today, it’s probably about 50/50 that we’ll, we’ll be able to contain that fire.”
For the most up-to-date information on the fires across the state visit the Emergency Victoria website or use the smart phone app, as well as via emergency broadcasters ABC Local Radio, commercial and designated community radio stations, and/ or Sky News TV.
