00:00The winds seem to be gusting up at around 70 kilometres an hour now, and they've changed
00:07direction, which makes it a bit harder for the firefighters out on the ground to fight
00:12the fires at the moment.
00:13Yeah, in that earlier media conference with the authorities in Melbourne, one of the fire
00:17officials there said this Otways blaze will run with this strong wind change, and they're
00:22expecting erratic and extensive fire behaviour.
00:25How concerned are you about the potential of what could happen with this over the coming
00:31hours?
00:33Well, we're very concerned because the field out there is pretty dry at the moment.
00:37We've had a long dry spell with the drought.
00:40We had a bit of rain over the last couple of months, but that's really surface rain.
00:44So the landscape is very dry and very brittle out there at the moment, so we're really concerned
00:48that it could run pretty quickly across firegrounds at the moment.
00:52And so what's the work that's been done in the run-up to this today in terms of door-knocking
00:58people and advising them to evacuate?
01:03So as we understand it, the Incident Control Centre here in Colac undertook a process of
01:08door-knocking, and according to the state update just earlier, there was up to 300 houses
01:14that were door-knocked.
01:16There's been a number of text messages and other things that have gone out to those people
01:22that are in potentially fire-affected areas and towns.
01:27Just initially that was to act and evacuate.
01:30There's a couple of areas now where they're being advised to evacuate now.
01:35And so we have relief centres that are set up to accommodate those people that are needing
01:39to get out of those fire ground areas very quickly.
01:42Yeah, and have some of those people spent the night at evacuation centres in Colac?
01:47They have.
01:48We've got two centres that have been set up.
01:51One is at the Colac showgrounds, and we had over 100 people there last night, and we expect
01:56a similar sort of number there today.
01:59We've also got our Blue Water Leisure Centre, which is available for families to go to.
02:05There was only about 10 or 20 that were located there across last night, and we're expecting
02:11a lot more tonight.
02:13In that media conference, that also mentioned that three homes or structures had been lost
02:18in this hot ways blaze so far.
02:21I guess, have you heard at all about what region that's in, what part of the fire?
02:27And I guess that's a good indication of just how potentially dangerous this is.
02:32We haven't had those structure damages confirmed as yet, but we understand them to be around
02:39the township of Jellibrand, but that was an indication of how quickly the fire was moving
02:45at that stage and can move.
02:47So we're hoping that there is no further loss of structures, but if the fire gets away, the
02:54direction that it's anticipated to go in will be across private property and may impact properties
03:00in its path.
03:02And so what's your advice to locals heading into this evening?
03:06Well, the advice has been to evacuate.
03:09So we would say to get out as soon as you can.
03:12We know a number of people have gone to shelter with other family members down towards Melbourne
03:18and Geelong, but we have got the relief centres up and running now, so it's to get out as
03:22early as possible.
03:23What we don't want is a real rush into those centres all at once.
03:27So the sooner you can get out, the better so that we can get you set up and get those centres
03:32organised so that we can actually accommodate everybody as they come in safely.
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