Firefighters assist in Australia
As a veteran Taranaki firefighter returns from helping battle deadly bushfires ravaging the eastern coast of Australia, another crew departed.
Crews are still battling more than 120 fires in New South Wales and Queensland. Four people have died and at least 300 homes have been destroyed or damaged.
Nigel Dravitzki, Taranaki/ Ruapehu/Whanganui principal rural fire officer, recently returned from a two -week deployment to the state co-ordination centre in
NSW as a team of 21 Kiwi firefighters left.
Dravitzki described the conditions they would face as extreme.
‘‘What it is, is just a build-up of back-to-back dry conditions. A lot of the standing trees and fuels are very, very dry.’’
He said November 8 was a significant day when a number of the blazes had to be escalated to emergency level.
‘‘The wind conditions on that day in particular reached upwards of 80kmh. All of those conditions together make it really, really volatile,’’ he said. ‘‘On that particular day there was more fire area burnt on that one day than there was in the whole fire season last year in New South Wales.’’
Since the blazes began more than one million hectares of land has been burnt.
Dravitzki said the day after he returned a crew of 21 firefighters including, Taranaki’s Nathan Jones, Jared Coombes, Trent Dravitzki and Andy Simmons of Whanganui, left to help battle blazes in Queensland for a two week deployment.
Australian fire chiefs have warned the worst of the summer was ‘‘still ahead of us’’, after expressing alarm at the scale and severity of the spring bushfires and Dravitzki said Kiwis would continue to lend a hand as and when required but needed to maintain the skills and resources to protect New Zealand as well.
‘‘Unfortunately they are in for a very long summer.’’