Eerie photos show the charred remains of the town of Balmoral which burned to the ground four days before Christmas when firefighters ran out of water, but hopeful locals say all is not lost.
The town, south-west of Sydney, was home to about 400 people but was decimated during the fires on December 18, five times the next day and again two days after that.
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said ‘there isn’t much left’ of the township.
The scale of the devastation in the Southern Highlands town can be seen in a series of harrowing pictures.
A burnt-out pink Volkswagen Beetle can be seen sitting on scorched Earth in the town of Balmoral – its tires have melted off
A lonely bus stop that survived the inferno stands before a forest of charred trees. A burnt-out stump sits next to it
A burnt-out pink Volkswagen Beetle can be seen sitting on scorched Earth – its tires have melted off.
A lonely bus stop that survived the inferno stands before a forest of charred trees.
The rubble remains of a home are strewn along a property amid a sea of blackened trees.
Despite the Premier’s claim that the town had been razed to the ground, angry locals fought back.
‘We are a small but strong community,’ Brendon O’Connor, the captain of the Balmoral Rural Fire Brigade, told the Illawarra Mercury.
‘We endured ten massive hits and we’re still standing.’
The rubble remains of a home are strewn along a property amid a sea of blackened trees, in front of a house that was saved
Trees burnt by bushfires stand near homes. The Earth is scorched after more than seven fires ravaged the area, almost decimating the town
A sign was written in response to Ms Berejiklian’s comments and hung up on a fence. It read: ‘No Gladys we haven’t been destroyed’
Another of the volunteers who risked his life battling the blaze said he found comments made by Ms Berejiklian offensive during an interview with 2GB radio.
The volunteer, known only as Greg, said Balmoral ‘has not been wiped off the map’.
‘It was horrific… It is not almost gone. It is all still there,’ he said.
‘The suggestion that we failed in defending that village… I don’t know how the other guys [in the fire crew] take that, but me personally, I’m quite offended at the suggestion that we lost that village because we didn’t.’
A sign was written in response to Ms Berejiklian’s comments and hung up on a fence.
It read: ‘No Gladys we haven’t been destroyed.’
A house is seen barely standing after the catastrophic bushfires that swept through the tiny town of Balmoral
A fireman fights a bushfire to protect a property in Balmoral, 150 kilometres southwest of Sydney on December 19
Captain O’Connor previously told ABC Radio the town was devastated by the fires because it runs on limited tank water.
Crews were trying to fight two separate firefronts with tanks filled with water, but they were quickly drained due to the enormity of the blaze.
‘It was terrible. We had eight fire appliances dealing with the fire storm and no water left. The tanks and town had been drained. We had to wait for another tank to make it in and restock us,’ Mr O’Connor said.
But by that point, the unpredictable winds had picked up on both sides of the village and the volunteers were flanked by flames.
‘We’re only a small rural community,’ Mr O’Connor said. ‘Well over 90 per cent of the bushland in the village area is gone.
Balmoral had about 150 homes but lost 18 to the fires.
Pictures show the devastating conditions firefighters were forced to work in, as a blanket of orange smoke settled on the Blue Mountains and embers flew in every direction
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian speak to the media during a visit to the Wollondilly Emergency Control Centre in Sydney, Sunday, December 22
One of the volunteers who was working to save a home watched his own further down the street go up in flames.
‘He was saving another home and he watched his own burn down,’ the fire captain said. Mr O’Connor’s own home was also damaged in the fires.
The town is currently without power but most people chose to evacuate anyway. They’re hoping to be let back in at some point on Monday to properly assess the damage.
Mr O’Connor said in his 20 years of experience fighting fires he’d never seen conditions so catastrophic.
‘From the 2001 bushfires which also came through Balmoral, to Black Saturday and the Canberra fires, I’ve been to most of the big ones,’ he said.
‘They were all devastating, but I’ve never experienced fire activity like this.’