A man saved dozens of stranded tourists in his tinny after watching his own house burn to the ground.
Brett Cripps, 51, spotted the terrified campers stuck on the shore near their caravans at Lake Conjola on the New South Wales south coast on Tuesday.
‘I knew I had to help. I yelled out, ‘come on, you’ve got to get out of here’,’ Mr Cripps told the ABC.
He rescued the two families and loaded them into his boat before driving away from the blaze approaching the lake.
But while bravely saving the families, which included seven children aged from three to 10, Mr Cripps saw his home of 50 years be engulfed by flames.
Brett Cripps, 51, (in red) spotted two families stranded on the side of Lake Conjola. He helped put two families into his boat before driving away from the blaze approaching the lake
Mr Cripps said seeing his house reduce to rubble in front of his eyes was hard to handle (pictured: his father’s charred car)
While saving the group of tourists, Mr Cripps watched his house of 50 years burn to the ground. Pictured: his father’s car on his property
The group of seven children, seven adults and two dogs spent three hours on the lake in the tiny boat, which had a capacity for just six people.
While fire surrounded the boat on both sides of the lake, the group used clothing to cover their faces from the billowing smoke.
‘It was like an inferno; we were about 500 yards away on the water and could still feel the immense heat,’ Mr Cripps said. ‘We lost everything.’
After praising the young kids for their composure during the evacuation, Mr Cripps said seeing his house reduce to rubble in front of his eyes was hard to handle.
‘Fifty years of memories gone. It’s hard. My dad’s car was incinerated. Mine was OK, but I’m going back to look for my car keys.’
Smoke and wildfire rage behind Lake Conjola, on the NSW south coast on Thursday
Boats are pulled ashore as smoke and wildfires rage behind Lake Conjola
Among the rescued tourists was Andrew Flaxman, who labelled Mr Cripps a ‘local hero’ for saving his wife and children.
‘This guy saved our family,’ Mr Flaxman said in an Instagram post.
Before Mr Cripps’s heroics, he and his 75-year-old father were packing up their tinny on New Year’s Eve when they noticed embers from the bush reach the other side of the road.
It then started a large blaze next to his house and four of his neighbours’ properties.
A 70-year-old man was found dead outside a home at Yatte Yattah, west of Lake Conjola, on Tuesday night.
But an 81-year-old woman who was missing from Conjola Park was found alive on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a third state of emergency of the bushfire season was declared by the NSW government on Thursday ahead of re-elevated fire risk over the weekend.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the declaration would come into effect from Friday morning, with severe to extreme conditions forecast for Saturday.
‘All our personnel, all our agencies know that from tomorrow they will be subject to forced evacuations, road closures, road openings and anything else we need to do as a state to keep our residents and to keep property safe. We don’t take these decisions lightly,’ Ms Berejiklian told reporters on Thursday.
Mass evacuations from bushfire-ravaged southern NSW, meanwhile, have been hampered by massive traffic queues and petrol shortages.
More than 110 blazes continue to burn across NSW on Thursday afternoon, with more than 50 burning out of control.
Among the blazes are the 260,000-hectare Currowan fire on the NSW south coast, the 130,000ha Dunns Road fire in the Snowy Valleys and the 105,000ha Green Valley fire east of Albury.
A total of 18 people have died during this year’s horror bushfire season and more than 1,298 homes have been destroyed.