Evacuees rely on any horsepower to escape blaze
WHEN a third dangerous fire in central Queensland raced towards Mount Larcom, Rhonda Anderson mounted her horse to ride 30km to Gladstone as a wall of smoke dwarfed the small town.
“I’ve locked the house up. It’s the first time we’ve had fires like this in Mount Larcom,” she said. “It is a big surprise.” Other residents were evacuated by bus, or left by car.
Fire crews had been monitoring the blaze at Ambrose, west of Gladstone, as conditions steadily worsened yesterday and it travelled towards Mount Larcom. Then residents were ordered to leave.
Temperatures soared above 40C and reported wind gusts were in excess of 50km/ h.
A roadblock was in place at Mount Larcom, which is where the Bruce Highway and Gladstone- Mount Larcom Rd meet.
Geoff Tate was forced to stop there because of the fire.
Mr Tate was doing a friend a favour by driving a trailer from Hervey Bay to Rockhampton when he was stopped at the roadblock.
Residents were also turned away, as the sky turned dark and helicopters swooped in to save the small town.
It is not the first time Mr Tate has seen such a big fire.
“That’s just the way life goes in the bush; I come from the bush and you’ve got to put up with this,” he said.
“This is what we live with, it’s only city dwellers who get all excited about not being able to drive up the highway.”
Also there was QFES mechanic Corey Mitchell, who was sent from Brisbane yesterday morning to help out those who have been working on firefighting trucks at the frontline.
“We’ve just come up to relieve the mechanics up here. We just got told to start driving up here, we don’t know exactly where we’re going but we’ll figure that out probably tomorrow now,” he said.
Almost 140 fires are burning across the state, including a massive blaze in the Deepwater region between Gladstone and Bundaberg that’s sent 1500 people fleeing. More than 8000 people have been told to evacuate from Gracemere to Rockhampton.