A teenager who faced sleeping in his car after being turned away from evacuation centres as his hometown burned was given a bed by kind strangers.
Travis Radford, 18, escaped his home in Eden, on the New South Wales south coast, as a ferocious blaze crossed the Victorian border and threatened threatened homes.
On Saturday night, Mr Radford and his mum got a knock on the door and were advised to evacuate.
They jumped in the car with their dog and two cats and began the long, slow drive to evacuation centres
Travis Radford, 18, escaped his home in Eden, on the New South Wales south coast, as a ferocious blaze crossed the Victorian border and threatened threatened homes
‘Ash caked onto my windshield after hastily evacuating, he wrote on Twitter.
‘I was part of a convoy of cars, escorted by police to Merimbula and Bega evac centres at a slow 50km/h crawl. Wipers and spray needed all the way to maintain visibility.’
What should have been a 40-minute trip turned into a harrowing hour and a half journey through heavy smoke, falling ash and struggling wildlife, he told news.com.au.
But once they reached the evacuation centres, Mr Radford and his mum realised there was only one accepting pets, and it was full.
Mr Radford posted a photo of his windshield covered in ash from the NSW bushfires
‘The only evac centre accepting pets was Bega Showgrounds. But it was full. We were told we would have to sleep in our cars. There was also talk of sleeping in a shopping centre.’
After posting a plea for help in a community Facebook group, a family offered them a bed and a shower.
The journalism student, who works at a local cafe, said he was amazed at how the community was coming together.
‘My boss opened up the cafe for people to stay. It stayed open all night long.’
An eerie photo from a home in Bega shows the orange sky thick with smoke and ash
Mr Radford Tweeted his experience escaping harrowing bushfires in Eden, New South Wales
While the border fire was downgraded to ‘watch and act’ on Sunday night, the blaze is still out of control and Mr Radford fears for his friends who stayed behind.
‘All the roads are closed. Essentially everyone is trapped. And the RFS are predicting for it to get worse. It’s insane.’
As of 2.30 on Sunday afternoon, Bega residents hadn’t seen sunlight in 22 hours as heavy clouds of smoke descended on the valley.
NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said ‘lots of people’ had evacuated the town of Eden as the fire approached on Saturday night.
The highway into the south coast town of Eden glowed red as bushfires threatened the town
Buildings have been destroyed in the Border Fire. Damage is seen around Eden NSW from bushfires
‘It’s moving a bit further north and towards rural and isolated property just to the west of Eden,’ he told reporters on Sunday morning.
‘It’s still pretty active down there, and there is lots of attention from local firefighters.’
Containment efforts were hampered overnight after firefighters lost power at an important water pump.
Commissioner Fitzsimmons said there were still 150 fires burning across NSW, but there had been an ‘easing of conditions’ following rain on the south coast.
Hundreds of locals gathered by the wharf at Eden, on the NSW south coast, were told to leave the town as the Border Fire approaches from the south
‘It’s certainly a welcome reprieve, it’s psychological relief if nothing else but for all the communities being affected by those fires. But unfortunately, it’s not putting out the fires,’ Commissioner Fitzsimmoms said.
‘It’s not helping us with the furthering of the work of backburning and consolidation work, so we will have to wait to see this moisture dissipate, so we can get on with the important work of containment lines and backburning and consolidation right across the enormity of those fire grounds, (which is) hundreds of thousands of hectares.’
‘There’s lots of damage and destruction.’