Four major “fires of concern” continue to burn across the West Coast, with a number of warnings still in place for the region.
State Fire Commander Jeremy Smith confirmed that while some warnings, including an evacuation alert for Zeehan, were downgraded overnight due to improving conditions, the emergency is far from over.
“The past 24 hours have been extremely challenging for fire crews,” he said on Friday afternoon.
“We’ve had fire spread in a number of the fire grounds and approximately an additional 20,000 hectares of vegetation has burned … so the fire area is considerably larger.”
The perimeter of the fire is thought to be 1,200 kilometres long across the four main fires at Yellowband Plain, Pieman River, Mount Donaldson and Canning Peak.
Smith said that “all has to be fully extinguished”. “Whether that takes 100-150mm of rain or our fire crews going metre by metre across the fire ground, it’s just going to be a long, hard slog.”
Property damage has been minimal so far, with only one hut along the Overland Track confirmed destroyed.
However, comprehensive damage assessments remain impossible until firefighters can access the entire fire ground.
The majority of the state’s firefighting resources have been mobilised to the West Coast, with reinforcements arriving from Queensland, New South Wales and New Zealand.
An evacuation centre at the Queenstown sports stadium remains open, having sheltered 78 people on Thursday night, while people in other parts of the state are being reminded to avoid smoke.
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