Wedge Island bushfire: Residents breathe sigh of relief after firefighters stop blaze from reaching Cervantes

Residents in Cervantes are breathing a sigh of relief, with firefighters managing to hold-off an out-of-control bushfire threatening the town overnight — but authorities are warning: “We are not out of the woods yet.”

Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson confirmed on Friday that there had been no reports of property damage after firefighters worked through the night to stop the blaze, which reached just 2km from the townsite.

The fire has tripled in size since it was sparked on Monday by a fatal crash, razing around 75,000ha of land.

It remains out-of-control and uncontained. The fire had a perimeter of almost 362km on Friday night.

“Thankfully, there has been no reports of property loss or loss of life,” Mr Dawson said.

“Our emergency responders have done an amazing job and I’m thankful to them for protecting communities. But we know we are not out of the woods yet.

“We’re experiencing difficult weather conditions today and over the weekend.”

Department of Fire and Emergency Service Commissioner Darren Klemm said 8km of backburning was done on Thursday night.

“Containment lines have held firm in Cervantes and Wedge, while sand dunes are protecting the Grey community,” he said.

“The plan today is to continue backburning to consolidate these containment lines.

“While crews are using every tool available to bring this fire under control, the situation is still very challenging.”

Mr Klemm said thunderstorms were forecast from 5pm on Friday north of the fire ground, which would “come with little rainfall” and further ignitions.

He said it had been an “incredibly challenging week” for career and volunteer firefighting crews.

As well as the Cervantes fire, there have also been emergency-level fires in Champion Lakes and West Toodyay since Monday. Both of those fires have since been downgraded.

The Bureau of Meteorology predicts a maximum of mid-30s around Cervantes on Saturday.

“We do have to be careful with wind changes because it can make the fire move off in a different direction,” senior meteorologist Catherine Schelfhout said.

“The only risk would be a slight risk of a thunderstorm impacting the area, and that can bring gusty winds from any direction.”

Incident controller Damien Pumphrey said more than 200 firefighters had made “considerable progress” controlling the blaze on Friday, but that the weekend’s weather could still worsen conditions.

North-westerly winds over the weekend are forecast to increase humidity in the area, which Ms Schelfhout said could make firefighting efforts easier.

Mr Pumphrey said the fire had burned “all the way around” the eastern side of Gray.

He said the Pinnacles had also been saved as of Friday night, but that surrounding natural vegetation may have been burned.

Earlier this week, two volunteer firefighters were injured, one of them suffering non-life threatening burns.

Mr Klemm revealed another two volunteer firefighters had a lucky escape when a powerline fell on their truck.

One of two new black hawk helicopters, which were due to start operations on Sunday under a $10 million contract, had been brought online early to start Friday.

The second will start operating on Sunday alongside the WA large air tanker.

Another two black hawk helicopter are due to arrive in WA after fighting fire in North America.

Two large air tankers — the National large air tanker and another from NSW — arrived in the State on Thursday.

Mr Klemm said WA was well-prepared for the impending height of the bushfire season.

He said there were parts of WA that were “incredibly dry”, including the Great Southern, Ravensthorpe and Esperance and out towards the Nullarbor.

Communities in Cervantes, Cooljarloo, Nambung, Grey and Wedge Island are still bound by emergency alerts and have been warned it is too late to leave.

Anybody in Cervantes who did not evacuate north to Jurien Bay is urged to not evacuate and instead prepare their property and find a safe place with running water and a clear exit route.

“You are in danger and need to act immediately to survive,” an emergency alert said.

“There is a threat to lives and homes.”

Dandaragan shire president Tony O’Gorman said he was “pretty confident” the blaze could be contained over the next few days.

“We’re actually feeling a bit more confident this morning,” he told ABC Radio on Friday morning.

“The latest update I had last night from our Shire CEO is that we’ve got some confidence in the containment lines that we’ve built and we’re expecting that they’re going to hold and that the fire will start to be scaled back and come back into local government control over the coming days.

“We’ve got to give credit to DFES and our volunteers, they started back burning along Indian Ocean Drive ... back towards the fire containment line and we’re hopeful that’s going to hold.

“We’re still looking at another day or two before (people can drive back home) ... that’s up to the incident controller, and we’ll have that discussion this morning to see when those road closures might start to be removed.

“But I’m sure he’s not going to remove any road closures until he’s 100 per cent confident that this fire is out and there’s no risk to anybody moving along those roads.”

Western Power confirmed up to 18 homes and businesses in Cervantes and Nambung were without power.

The evacuation centre at Jurien Bay Sport and recreation Centre will re-open at 8am today.

The Bureau of Meteorology has a forecast top of 36C today, with morning north-easterly gusts expected to reach up to 35km/h.