Emergency bushfire warning for City of Swan in Perth's

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Fire crews are continuing to battle an emergency level bushfire in Perth's north east, which is threatening lives and homes. Authorities say strong gusts of wind are fanning the blaze that picked up yesterday.

Transcript

00:00 We still have active fire, the fire isn't contained and controlled at the moment so

00:07 you know conditions are still pretty risky out there.

00:10 Which areas are causing you most concern?

00:14 It would be the north and the north east edge of our incident area, so it's in very steep

00:20 country and we're having difficulties accessing the area.

00:25 What are conditions like at the moment, how strong are the winds there?

00:32 This morning around 6 o'clock we had wind gusts up to 70 kilometres an hour but they

00:36 have slowed down a bit.

00:38 We're experiencing around the 65 kilometre gusts at the moment.

00:42 So you're facing particular challenges in fighting this fire Murray?

00:48 We are only through the access, so we've got six machines on site that are working hard

00:55 now to put in containment lines.

00:57 So we expect those containment lines will take the rest of the day into the dark.

01:04 So once they're in place we can get crews in there and start doing more mop up procedures.

01:10 Are people being told to evacuate?

01:13 Yes they were, in our emergency warning people are asked to leave.

01:23 So with the fire activity dying down we will review that and hopefully we can get some

01:27 people back into their homes this afternoon.

01:30 Are properties still under threat?

01:34 On the north edge of the fire, yes they are.

01:39 How many properties are we talking about?

01:43 Immediately close to the fire ground there's probably about a dozen but that leads into

01:50 quite a big subdivisional area so a lot of houses.

01:54 But we're pretty confident that we're going to keep this contained.

01:59 What's the forecast in terms of wind strength and direction?

02:06 The weather's going to stay on quite a similar pattern that we've been receiving over the

02:11 last two days.

02:12 So east, south, eastly winds.

02:15 And then we do have a wind change coming in in a couple of days time so we're very much

02:20 aware of that and hopefully we have our crews working on those flanks that are going to

02:28 be put under pressure and keep it all contained ready for those days.

02:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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