‘It came from everywhere’: NSW town counts the cost after bushfire hits | Australia news

When Garry Morgan arrived home on Friday afternoon, his rural north coast property was surrounded by a “huge cloud of smoke”. In less than twenty-four hours, the two houses on his street would disappear and the surrounding forest would be reduced to blackened skeletal remains.

Morgan’s township of Bulahdelah, about 235km north of Sydney, became the center of tragedy on Sunday evening when a seasoned firefighter with a “premonition” of the bushfire season died after being struck by a falling tree.

In the wider Bulahdelah area, four properties were lost, two on Emu Creek Road where Morgan lived, one on the Pacific Highway and one south of the town.

Bulahdelah is a popular stopover point on the Pacific Highway for holidaymakers heading from the mid-north coast to beach areas such as Seal Rocks, Forster and Port Macquarie.

Thick orange smoke blanketed the highway south of the city Monday afternoon. Helicopters dropping water bombs hovered overhead to assist firefighters trying to extinguish the fire that has burned 4,000 hectares since Friday.

Passing trucks slowed to observe the traffic cones and speed reduction signs, the blackened gum trees and burnt grass on both sides of the highway. On Monday evening, it remained at the watch and act level.

But it might have seemed like an ordinary day in Bulahdelah if it weren’t for the helicopters circling overhead and the lingering smell of smoke in the air.

A refueling station for planes was established at the town’s showground, and it was turned into a headquarters for about 300 firefighters and volunteers who came from across the state to help.

By Monday afternoon, cardboard boxes were being unloaded from trucks and candy was being packaged into ziplock bags. One firefighter estimated that they needed a bottle of water every 20 minutes when they were on the front lines.

Waves of smoke continued to billow from ember spots along Emu Creek Road, a winding rural street that hugs the creek bed in the south of the township where two houses were lost.

On a fence post outside a burned-out property, a charred teddy bear remained pinned to the stump along with a Christmas hat.

Down the road, Morgan was sitting on her porch with her two dogs; a small patch of grass surrounding his house was the only remaining sign of what the landscape used to look like. Although his neighbor was burned, his property was miraculously saved.

He recalled getting a call from a friend at lunchtime on Saturday who told him “you’ve got about half an hour and then there’s going to be a fire.” The hit prediction was accurate.

“We sprayed the house, we poured it, we sprayed the fence line,” he said, and then his reaction turned to “panic.” “I thought, ‘What have I gotten myself into?'” he said. “But I wasn’t leaving.”

Luckily, firefighters surrounded the house and were able to save him. The wildfire went out in about half an hour and sounded like a “roaring flame.”

“No words can express this,” he said. “The dogs wouldn’t leave me, it was scary.”

Morgan, who has lived in the same house for nearly 30 years, has never seen the land this dry.

“We had rain every week,” he said. “We’ve never had fires like this. But you have to take the good with the bad.”

On the same street, Jeff Curley was tending to his friend’s property, which was largely spared from Saturday’s fire except for the broken headlights of a car and a barrel of firewood that had been stored for the winter and turned to ashes.

“I’ve been here many times,” he said. “A few years ago a fire almost burned into a nearby hill and it was pretty scary at the time, but the wind has changed.

“It’s much drier this time. It came from all over and the fires largely saved it.” [the property].”

The experience wasn’t new for Curley, who nearly lost his Wattle Grove home during fires in 2019.

“You see people on the news saying, ‘I can’t believe how fast it came,'” he said. “You think you’re there and all of a sudden he’s on top of you. I know what it’s like. I told my friend to get out of there and he did.”

NSW Rural Fire Service public information officer Kirsty Channon said crews from multiple agencies had come “up and down the coast” to assist with containment efforts and had done a “fantastic job” protecting homes from collapse.

He said all the agencies “came together” after the death of one of their own.

“The fire community is one big family,” he said. “But we’re definitely not out of the woods yet.

“We’ve seen the Pacific Highway open and close several times, the fire jumping back and forth. It’s still not under control, it’s going to continue to grow.”

Channon said efforts in the coming hours and days will focus on the small town of Nerong, which is expected to be affected by the Pacific Highway fire on Monday evening. Residents were asked to leave the area and make a fire plan if they were not prepared.

“There were small fires caused by lightning a few days ago,” he said.

“Tomorrow’s weather is in the mid 30s with variable wind and that’s a tough situation; there are wind eddies in the area.”