Face Of Nation International : (Source : 9news, Australia) : The manager of a farm near a 4600-hectare bushfire south of Canberra has likened the blaze to a dragon.
Residents of the small rural village of Tharwa south of Canberra were told late in the afternoon on Tuesday that it was too late to leave.
The emergency level fire in Namadgi National Park was heading northeast towards Tharwa.
The blaze was threatening properties in Tharwa as well as properties on Boboyan, Apollo and Top Naas roads.
An evacuation centre has been set up at Erindale College in the Canberra suburb of Wanniassa.
Caloola Farm manager Ralph Hurst-Meyers was desperately trying to convince three men still on the farm near the blaze to leave as they planned to defend the property.
“It just looks like a dragon, it’s unbelievable. It’s like a mushroom cloud with a red eye,” Mr Hurst-Meyers told AAP on Tuesday.
He said firefighters had told him the farm would become a trap if the fire reached there and said it was too dangerous to defend it.
Mr Hurst-Meyers said he had been in Canberra for the catastrophic 2003 bushfire and he’d learned it wasn’t worth holding your ground.
“I know what the beast looks like. I’ve seen this before. This is a shocker,” he said.
At a Tharwa community meeting earlier on Tuesday, ACT Rural Fire Service chief officer Joe Murphy told residents it would be a lengthy campaign to get the fire under control.
“In all likelihood our worst day this week will be Saturday,” he said.”We have some pretty ordinary weather this week.”
ACT Emergency Services Commissioner Georgeina Whelan said the fire was growing at 400 hectares an hour.Erratic conditions are expected to make the fire worse on Tuesday night,
