16 houses lost, 9 damaged as bushfire rips through Central Coast’s Koolewong

A natural disaster has been declared in the bushfire-affected areas, freeing up help for residents impacted by the blazes.

Transcript

00:00Overcast conditions here for firefighters, just 48 hours, less than 48 hours since the

00:09fire ripped through this small suburb on the New South Wales Central Coast in Kooliwong.

00:15You can see that the fire is still smouldering in the wreckage here, 16 houses lost, 9 houses

00:24damaged, 118 houses have been saved. At the height of the fire, people were actually having to flee

00:33over the railway lines to escape the flames. Such was the ferocity of this fire that came from

00:41absolutely nowhere. Police are actually investigating the cause of the fire. A number of residents have

00:49been walking through the streets this morning, making their way to their homes to collect any

00:54items that they need. It is an exclusion zone still, so residents unable to move back into unaffected

01:01properties, but they have been allowed in to collect some items, medication and other personal effects.

01:08And we now turn to the recovery and how we come out of this moving forward. As I say, a long

01:17effort to go at this fire still at advice level and firefighters still with some work to do here

01:24at Kooliwong as they ensure that this fire is fully extinguished before conditions worsen later in the week.