Lynne Mowbray|
The showers of rain which fell over the weekend, has been a pleasant sight for our fire fighters.
RFS public liaison officer Peter Jones said that the main issues in the Clarence Valley over the last week have been the Myall Creek fire, which has impacted the areas of Woombah, Iluka Road and Ashby.
“This fire (the Myall Creek fire), originated in the Richmond Valley and is being managed by the Richmond Valley RFS,” Mr Jones said.
“There are still some significant hot spots on that southern edge (of the fire) near Ashby and towards Coaldale; Coaldale Road.
“They did receive some rain over the fire ground yesterday (Sunday), which was not enough to extinguish it totally but certainly with the winds today, everyone’s a little bit on edge, should things rear up again.
“At the moment the fire is still within its identified control lines, but they’re still trying to extinguish.
“There’s also another fire down at Wooli, which was started by lightning on 29th.
“It’s only a small fire of 16 hectares, but because it’s burning in peat and although it’s contained, we’re watching it today because it could come out with the winds today.
“We’ve had gusts of up to 65 kilometres per hour today in some areas, so we’re just basically sitting and waiting.
“There are a number of fires that we’re dealing with where the back burning has now been hampered by the rain. So if we wanted to put a control line in, that’s made it a little bit more difficult to do.
“Currently in the Clarence Valley we have five fires burning.
“We still have multiple interstate crews from Tasmania, South Australia – who are working here in the incident management team and we’ve still got some New Zealanders floating around as well as National Parks and State Forest (personnel).
“The community are advised to just keep a watchful eye out and make sure they have the ‘Fires Near Me’ app and hopefully with the rain, things will start to ease down a bit after this weather goes through today (Monday),” he said.
