00:00 Roaring to life, fire ripped through suburbia.
00:07 Amid scorching winds, it moved quickly,
00:10 but so did the staff at this childcare centre,
00:13 rushing the children away from a grass-fed inferno over the back fence.
00:18 Crackling hot hell heat, yeah.
00:22 The embers have just pushed across, spot fires just going everywhere.
00:26 It's just crazy.
00:27 It was rapid. It just went from licking the fences
00:31 to all of a sudden blowing all the way down,
00:34 and it was just billowing smoke.
00:36 And I kept ringing the fire brigade saying,
00:38 "You've got to send every crew you've got in WA," cos it was bad.
00:42 (FIRE ROARS)
00:44 Crews did arrive in force, with aerial support
00:48 and 120 firefighters on the ground,
00:51 bolstered by locals, some with just boots and buckets.
00:57 Pretty scary.
00:58 I was ready to evacuate,
00:59 but thankfully all these local people helped out.
01:02 It's burned through our fence just a little bit more up there,
01:07 and the house behind us, they've burnt their caravan,
01:10 about half of it, and almost got the gasoline can on it too.
01:13 The 15-year-old home, because he was among hundreds of students,
01:16 forced to evacuate at lunchtime.
01:19 It's still about 37 degrees outside,
01:22 and with the wind still really strong,
01:24 parts of the bush that have already burnt
01:26 have been whipping up spot fires.
01:28 Embers also continue landing in little parts of unburnt vegetation.
01:33 This here, right next to the high school.
01:36 Thought to be accidental, the cause wasn't immediately clear,
01:40 but how things got so bad certainly was.
01:43 With much of the state sweltering through a heatwave,
01:46 hundreds of properties also lost power in unplanned outages,
01:50 while in Lancelin, shops were closed and homes got hot
01:54 due to a planned outage that couldn't be shifted.
01:57 It was a pity.
01:58 Maybe it could have been changed to another day,
02:01 but that didn't happen.
02:02 (ALL GROAN)
02:04 But even the dry heat couldn't dampen things for Levers,
02:07 celebrating the end of high school in WA's south.
02:10 out!
02:10 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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