Uncontrolled bushfire burning southeast of Bunbury

Fire crews are on alert for a bush fire burning in Bunbury, a city south of Perth. The blaze has been contained but is not yet under control.

Transcript

00:00Crews have been working overnight to contain a blaze which is not yet controlled in the

00:08southwest of WA, just near Bunbury.

00:11Now where I'm standing at the moment is the Incident Control Centre and to the west of

00:16me is the local prison.

00:19Now the fire overnight did come close to the exterior fences of the prison.

00:25Fire crews were both inside and outside the walls of the prison to make sure that they

00:31could bring that blaze, contain that blaze.

00:35Now from what I've been told, as well as the Bunbury prison being under threat, it also

00:40included the Bunbury Airport which is just to the north of me.

00:45The airport was shut down overnight but this morning it has been reopened from fire crews

00:52working tirelessly overnight.

00:54Now no prisoners were evacuated last night from the Bunbury prison because of the fire

01:00crews being able to maintain those fire lines throughout the night.

01:05I spoke earlier to the incident control officer who is managing this area and he told me that

01:12because of the hard efforts of the crews that have come from not just Bunbury but from other

01:18communities around the southwest that they were able to bring the blaze, contain the

01:24blaze but it's not yet controlled.

01:26Take a listen.

01:27At one point the prison had become under threat from fire.

01:31Our crews worked really hard on the outside of the fire and we also had crews inside the

01:36prison itself and they worked really hard to contain the fire on the outside.

01:42There was embers flying over the prison but due to all the hard work from all the fire

01:45crews we managed to get away with any issues there at all.

01:49Conditions today are hot and windy.

01:53Fire crews today, what they're worried about is being faced with a strong south easterly.

01:58Now from what I can gather the blaze has burnt through around 50 hectares of bushland between

02:06the Bunbury prison and the Bunbury Airport.

02:09Now because of the smoke and the embers crews are monitoring it very very closely.

02:15As mentioned where I'm standing at the moment at the incident control centre they have been

02:20trying to map out those areas, those major areas of concern that they're going to be

02:24really focusing on today.

02:27In case of a flare up I did ask if the Bunbury prisoners would have to be evacuated.

02:32They told me that it would be a logistical nightmare to get prisoners and reposition

02:37them, get them out and reposition them.

02:40So they're just monitoring those areas really really closely this morning and the rest of

02:46the day.

02:47But as you can probably hear there are water bombers, they've also got helicopters that

02:53they have got out here and so fire crews are working really really hard to control that

03:00blaze.