Two fires in Sydney’s West keep crews busy overnight

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Fire crews have contained a blaze at a petrol station in Fairfield in Sydney's West after about a dozen gas cylinders caught on fire. There was also a separate Sydney fire at a plastics factory this morning nearby.

Transcript

00:00 It was definitely a scary night for residents in Fairfield in Sydney's west when they saw

00:05 their local petrol station on fire.

00:08 And as you can see behind me, these gas cylinders are still intact, but there was a chance that

00:14 they could have fully exploded given the intensity of the fire.

00:18 We came to fill up petrol and we just saw the whole thing burst up in flames from the

00:23 start until like we got put out now.

00:27 And how big were the flames?

00:28 What did it look like?

00:29 It was pretty big, it was massive.

00:30 It went up to the tree almost next to it.

00:33 So basically we were driving and we were trying to fill up the petrol and then all of a sudden

00:40 just flames started coming out of nowhere.

00:42 And how big were the flames?

00:43 What was it like down there?

00:44 It was like reaching the tree and everything and it burned even the house at the back and

00:50 everything.

00:51 There were about 50 firefighters battling this blaze last night and it took about three

00:56 hours to extinguish, but we heard also from Superintendent Paul Collis who says this was

01:02 a massive job for those firefighters.

01:04 About 6.30 we got called to the Metro service station here behind us where we had three

01:10 banks of large LPG cylinders that were totally involved in fire.

01:15 We've had about 50 firefighters and 17 fire appliances that have responded.

01:20 The fire was spreading to the service station building, the house on one side and the houses

01:25 behind.

01:26 So it was a challenging and complex incident.

01:29 Fire crews were kept really busy overnight.

01:32 Around 4am the Vinodex plastic factory at nearby Smithfield caught a blaze.

01:38 That's only about five minutes from where we are here in Fairfield and that factory

01:43 manufactures plastic piping and so firefighters were concerned about accelerants and other

01:49 things inside that building.

01:51 So their priority was to make sure that that fire was contained to just one section of

01:56 the property so it didn't continue to spread.

01:58 There were workers inside the factory when it caught a blaze.

02:02 About 30 people were evacuated from that building so it definitely wasn't an easy shift for

02:07 those workers and that's an industrial area so many of the streets were blocked off and

02:13 many people trying to get to work this morning to their other factories or warehouses weren't

02:18 able to access it.

02:19 Firefighters, about 100 of them were at that scene this morning at 4am and it took about

02:25 1.5 hours to put out and they're just still extinguishing the blaze now.

02:28 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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