Victorian campers forced to evacuate due to bushfire

Campers remain at an evacuation centre in Victoria's south-west after an overnight bushfire threatened Cape Otway near the Great Ocean Road.

Transcript

00:00As campers slept in the Otway National Park, a bushfire took hold.

00:08Everyone in the campsite was asleep sort of thing and then all of a sudden you hear a bit of a commotion

00:14and then you hear these words of fire, fire.

00:17At three o'clock we got the evacuation notice and that's when we got our fire plan, action plan going

00:24and we did an amazing job I think.

00:26The owners of the Bimby campsite led 150 campers through the dark to the safety of an evacuation centre in Apollo Bay.

00:35We basically just took our passports and some money and left.

00:40At the Blanket Bay campground, closed roads meant many couldn't get out.

00:45More than 100 forced to sit tight.

00:48Dozens more along the Great Ocean Road trail were told to hike to the Cape Otway Lighthouse.

00:54A bit of an adventure.

00:57Happy that someone was telling us there was a fire.

01:00Just weird because we're from Sydney and this doesn't happen very often in Sydney.

01:06The fire burnt quickly through 14 hectares of bush.

01:10The bush is dry so fires that do start do have the potential to become and grow really quickly.

01:17But with 60 firefighters and 28 trucks on the ground, it was under control by mid-morning.

01:23The source of the blaze is yet to be determined but crews on the ground suspect it was sparked by a campfire.

01:30There was lots of campfires being lit by visitors to the area who don't understand the potential for fires that we've had.

01:39Some campers are being allowed back onto their sites tonight

01:42while others will have to wait until roads are recessed and reopened in the coming days.

01:47While the danger here has passed for now, it's another demonstration of the hazards lurking in Victoria's bushland this summer.