The worst fire to rip through the Royal National Park since Christmas Day 2001 is almost under control.
The fire, which started on Saturday, is being treated as “suspicious” by police with reports of multiple ignition points. It has since ripped through about 2100 hectares of the Royal National Park.
NSW Rural Fire Service Sutherland Shire district manager Superintendent Andrew Pinfold said no-one had been injured or buildings damaged in the fire, following outstanding work from hundreds of firefighters as well as staff and volunteers from other emergency services.
At 10.30am on Monday, he said firefighters were battling the remainder of the blaze located between Lady Carrington Dr and Sir Bertram Stevens Dr.
Superintendent Pinfold said they aimed to have the remainder of the fire under control by Monday evening.
“Barring something going wrong I’m confident we will be able to control the fire,” Superintendent Pinfold said. “Once we have the fire controlled there will be a significant amount of work still to do.”
The Royal National Park is currently closed with access only open to residents. At this stage, Superintendent Pinfold said it was hard to say when it would re-open.
“I could not give a specific time or date at present [as to when it will re-open] because we are still to control the fire. Until that time we have got to guarantee safety.”
However, he thanked people for their patience and said they were doing their best to control the fire and make the area safe.
He urged anyone near the Royal National Park to call 000 if they witnessed anyone acting suspiciously or saw fires in the park.
“If they see any fires ring 000 and if anyone sees someone acting suspiciously ring 000 and record as many details as possible.”
He said hundreds of people from different emergency services, many of which were volunteers, had banded together to battle the fire.
“At times like this it really shows the epitome of the volunteer spirit – that people are prepared to give up their time to help others and get the job done.”
Bundeena resident Scott Dovey said he was out of town when the fire started on Saturday.
He ferried back into Bundeena on Saturday afternoon following road closures into the township. He said after talking with others in the community he decided to stay put in his home on Saturday night rather than evacuate.
“It was a little scary, in as much as you could see the smoke and the fire,” he said.
“But the wind was blowing the fire away from us. If we had had our normal southerly it would have been disastrous – so we were lucky.”
However, he said it was hard to get much sleep on Saturday night.
“You do tend to get up a lot during the night,” he added. “You don’t know what could happen during the night. And because the fire was [allegedly] deliberately lit we didn’t know if more fires were going to spring up around town.”
Marine Rescue NSW had boats ready for evacuation off some Royal National Park beaches but they were not used.
MRNSW Greater Sydney regional operations manager Glenn Evans, who was involved in co-ordinating the boat evacuation, said the Rural Fire Service were able to evacuate some people by road. “The RFS was able to evacuate people by road in a convoy.”
- The Rural Fire Service has reminded people to make sure they have a survival plan ready in case of a bush fire.
- People can also download the free app RFS Fires Near Me, through the Apple Store, to keep the public informed on fires.