20 November 2009

Fire in Fyshwick

| Jazz
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Anyone who’s ventured from the safe confines of their airconditioned office or home today would not at all be surprised to hear we’ve got fire. What you might be surprised to hear that its in Fyshwick. The RiotACT all seeing eye, not least of which has been supported on this occasion by Snarky, Localgirl, gingermick, Mothy, mcdoctor and DrPhil (our field correspondants) tells us that Canturf is ablaze and the CT building on Newcastle st has been abandoned evacuated.

Snarky’s post confirms :
There’s a substantial blaze at CanTurf’s Fyshwick site at the moment. Seems to have started at about 2pm or a little before. Lots of smoke and a strong northerly wind blowing the fire down towards the Gladstone/Maryborough St intersection. It appears to be one of the sheds away from the main house on the property. Co-workers who saw this first said they heard some loud explosions when the fire got going – diesel perhaps?

This bulletin from the ESA suggests its at a scrap metal yard that i didnt know existed.

If you’re in the area send in a pic.

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Typhoon said :

Was evacuated from Kembla st, was definitely a synthetic fire of some sort. We heard teh drums exploding about 1km away.
Road closures will remain in place for several hours, as the fire dies down, smoke will increase.
The evacuation of Fyshwick was a farce, all traffic directed onto one road, with four seperate roads funelling traffic into it. Fortunately I was on a motorcycle or I’d still be there.
Me thinks their emergency plans need refining……….

Methinks with there being limited roads in/out of Fyshwick, there was little choice but to funnel. You mean you broke the road rules to get ahead in traffic on a motorcycle? Unheard of.

TP3000 – RFS use of TRN is not encrypted. If it was then this (http://www.southern.conder-act.com/radio.htm) would be impossible and illegal.

I reckon the fire’s part of a government conspiracy to finally get Jack Martin kicked out of that scrap hovel so they can sell off that land.

andym said :

Also the RFS BFS radio is still operational on VHF channels and again is cross linked to the ACT RFS talkgroup on the digital system. So a “old” type of scanner like SCANACT will pick up the transmissions.

As far as I know if RFS use the TRN network it is encrypted with the finishing touches being applied over the next few weeks. Of course as per our el-cheapo Government, the TRN Network does occasionally not work, so ESA gets them to use UHF which anyone with a UHF thingy can listen to.

Hev submitted an article with some crappy photos I took as I was walking out of fyshwick, mostly of traffic but got three shots of the smoke not long after it started, it went toxic black at one stage and they had 2 helicopters water bombing the fire we could see.

“Me thinks their emergency plans need refining……….”

There probably isn’t a specific ’emergency’ plan or evacuation plan for the specific situation in Fyshwick today. It would be unrealistic to expect emergency services to have an off the shelf plan for every possible hazard or situation. Where there are plans these typically focus on command and control structures, communication (intra and inter-agency), reporting mechanisms and resource allocation. This type of approach allows agencies to respond flexibly to incidents which are rarely identical in terms of the threat and risks they pose.

The evacuation phase of an incident can often seem chaotic and disorganised because emergency services have to make snap decisions about evacuation areas, extraction routes, safe zones etc while still managing the incident scene. In this case people who wished to leave were evacuated without loss of life, injury or damage in a very short period of time – and traffic disruptions were kept to a minimum. A pretty good result considering the circumstances.

Dr Phil,
Correct AFP and urban fire brigades are digital and are ENCRYPTED. However with RFS and other units on scene COMCEN will place all units / people attending on a common channel which is digital and UNENCRYPTED. No issues monitoring and unencrypted chanel with a digital scanner.

Also the RFS BFS radio is still operational on VHF channels and again is cross linked to the ACT RFS talkgroup on the digital system. So a “old” type of scanner like SCANACT will pick up the transmissions.

‘Me thinks their emergency plans need refining……….’. Typhoon @13.

Can’t agree more. Just what do you do with a couple of B Doubles heading north on the Monaro when the highway is closed south of Canberra Ave? There would be very few options (and no parking) for these fellows when they are sent down the off ramp to Canberra Ave. As happened this afternoon.

The Police did as they were presumably told. Someone assessed the situation and decided the road closures. Well done. But this situation probably required a bit more thought.

I heard that a gas main caught on fire and they were scared that the small ACTEWAGL substation might go up so they evacuated everyone.

I’ve been listening here.

Was evacuated from Kembla st, was definitely a synthetic fire of some sort. We heard teh drums exploding about 1km away.
Road closures will remain in place for several hours, as the fire dies down, smoke will increase.
The evacuation of Fyshwick was a farce, all traffic directed onto one road, with four seperate roads funelling traffic into it. Fortunately I was on a motorcycle or I’d still be there.
Me thinks their emergency plans need refining……….

Some pics and videos here, by the way.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=160546&id=764622188&l=930816d4e3

(Not sure if embedded videos work, if it is indeed allowed but trying anyways just in case.)

Holden Caulfield4:15 pm 20 Nov 09

The traffic on Canberra Ave is still pretty stuffed, so I’d say Newcastle Street is still closed.

MrMagoo said :

Have actually been listening to the Scanner online and can confirm it was a scrap metal yard rather than Canturf. Several of the fire brigade units that intitally responded have been stood down in the last 25 minutes as the situation is controlled.

As a side note, many of the regional bush fire stations have been tasked to standby mode, reporting in from towers etc. updating weather conditions etc. There’s some nervous people at the moment.

what online scanner site you at, isn’t fire and afp digital?

I was having lunch at Cafe e Cibo (at the Wetlands) when we noticed the black smoke and were told by a helpful tradie that the fire was coming from the scrap yard near Canturf.
The black smoke is apparently due to burning tyres and probably oil also, as well as other materials which release dark noxious fumes, hence the evacuation.

As a result of police cordon we had to drive around to the other side of Fyshwick to be able to get back to our workplace on Wiluna street, which was apparently not required to evacuate. At this point it seems like only Newcastle and surrounding streets were evacuated.

I imagine the rain helped somewhat, but the two helicopters (one equipped with the drop-tank & pump mechanism and the other with a drop bucket) would probably have made the most difference.

GrimReaper7113:54 pm 20 Nov 09

Found this photo on twitter as I was searching for people talking about the fire. http://twitpic.com/q6lah

We’ve received advice at work that there’s road closures because of the fire “the Monaro Highway is presently closed from the Airport through to Fyshwick. Police are blocking both bridges over the Molonglo River at Dairy Road and Morshead Drive.

Information from someone in Fyshwick suggests there was a chemical fire at the Canturf facility.”

Yeah looked that the scrap metal yard kind of opposite Canberra Times building.
Lots of different colours of smoke too.
White smoke, black smoke, grey smoke.

Two water bombing helicopters too. One with the bucket system and one with the hose. (Oh no I need a bucket and a hose ASAP bro!)

Seems to be out now though.

colourful sydney racing identity3:26 pm 20 Nov 09

At the risk of giving the no talent arse clown a free plug, there are som pics on Mark Parton’s blog

http://partonwords.blogspot.com/2009/11/fyshwick-fire.html

Have actually been listening to the Scanner online and can confirm it was a scrap metal yard rather than Canturf. Several of the fire brigade units that intitally responded have been stood down in the last 25 minutes as the situation is controlled.

As a side note, many of the regional bush fire stations have been tasked to standby mode, reporting in from towers etc. updating weather conditions etc. There’s some nervous people at the moment.

30 minutes ago my advice would be to avoid Fyshwick/Canberra Avenue coz of road closures. Don’t know if it’s still the same, but it got pretty smokey for a while, and we felt at least one explosion.

There is a rather large crap metal yard next to Canturf. The amount of black smoke i could see from my window and the smell suggests it was not grass burning.

Right now Newcastle st is blocked off and there is a slowly moving car park along Gladstone St.

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