Bushfires threaten communities in Tasmania's west coast

ABC NEWS (Australia)

For nearly two weeks bushfires have threatened communities and infrastructure on the west coast of Tasmania. On Friday, people from the mining town of Zeehan were evacuated as flames licked local roads.

Transcript

00:00We're out with one of the fire crews near the town of Xi'an on the west coast of Tasmania.

00:07This is one of the areas that was burnt on Thursday.

00:09It was threatening the town of Xi'an kind of later into the afternoon and early evening.

00:14There was an evacuation alert there.

00:16And now the crews are coming back in.

00:17There was quite a bit of rain this morning, but they're wanting to get in here and look

00:21for hot spots before the wind picks up back again and could potentially restart fires

00:26from some of those hot spots.

00:28And so this was on, this was a blaze on a couple of days ago?

00:31Yep.

00:32Yep.

00:33So, I think that was...

00:34Thursday.

00:35Thursday.

00:36Yeah, Thursday they closed this road because of it jumping.

00:39So...

00:40Yeah.

00:41Yeah, so it's just important that we black out, make sure everything's cold.

00:45Otherwise it does have the chance to have embers going to unburnt stuff like that.

00:50Even though it is a bit damp, it still, it can still ignite if it finds dry stuff under

00:55that.

00:56Here now, looking across, probably a kilometre away, there's a plume of smoke coming up from

01:02an unburnt hillside.

01:04And so, would that have been an ember that's flown during the fire?

01:07I would say yes.

01:08It's spotted there, or it's come up from the side and the rain has put it out, but that's

01:13just been hidden away.

01:15And changing temperature now, and the wind has just picked it up and it's starting to

01:20smoke more and more as I look at it.

01:23This kind of ground, where it is still hot, where it's smouldering, where there are embers

01:26still alight, they can reignite and restart a fire in this area.

01:31There is unburnt land over there behind us, so we could potentially see fire here again

01:36if some of those hot spots aren't extinguished.

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