The blaze has torn through the small rural town of Yarloop, south of Perth – fanned by blustery hot winds.
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The fire has been ravaging Waroona, Harvey and surrounding areas, including Preston Beach, in Western Australia’s Peel and South West regions since Wednesday.
“The reality is, when the fires are burning, people will make judgment calls based on what they know at the time”, he said.
“As firefighters we understand the pressures and the workload that these guys and girls have been under the last couple of days battling these fires”, a rural fire services representative told reporters on Sunday. After re-entering the houses, the Department of Fire and Emergency Services found the remains of the men in two separate houses.
At a community meeting in Pinjarra over the weekend, Yarloop angry residents claimed authorities had failed to give them adequate warning as a fire was bearing down on their town.
The fire has so far burnt about 70,000 hectares of land with a perimeter of more than 220 kilometres (137 miles).
“It’s been really concerning at the moment to find out how many career and volunteer firefighters in particular have lost homes”.
Three people are missing and witnesses described multiple fireballs in the historic town, located south of Perth.
“These are yet to be definitively confirmed figures – but it appears that we’ve lost around 95 homes…”
Home owners flee their properties affected by the Waroona fires: Hundreds of people were evacuated from their properties in the Harvey Townsite and fled to the emergency evacuation centre at the Leschenault Leisure Centre in Australind on Thursday.
The nearby town of Harvey narrowly escaped fire damage when flames came within 1.6km of the town.
The Yarloop local said there was some confusion in the hours leading up to the evacuation of the town.
Yarloop resident Ron Sackville told 6PR radio there was “very little” left.
“This is a very, very hard fire to predict exactly what’s going to be happening”.
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Resources across Western Australia have been stretched as a result of the destruction, and 150 fire trucks supported by water bombers are working to contain the wildfires.
