A Fire & Rescue NSW Strike Team that included Deputy Captain Shaun Noble from Dorrigo and Firefighter Sandy McLagan from Urunga headed to the Eden area on Sunday to help combat the South Coast bushfires.
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They were replacing the Mid North Coast team who originally deployed on December 31 to Nowra and then Bega and Eden.
The initial contingent consisted of crews from stations up and down the Mid North Coast driving their local tankers down south.
The new set of firefighters were flown by RAAF aircraft out of Port Macquarie to Canberra and then bused to Eden.
North Coast Duty Commander Inspector Tony Lenthall said during their time in the Bega/Eden area they would be undertaking various operational roles including firefighting operations (bush/grass fires along with structure firefighting), assisting in clearing trees where required, rendering safe the hazards of asbestos as a result of fire damage to older structures and relieving local FRNSW crews who have been working around the clock.
He said that on Monday, the strike team responded to blaze at a large woodchip storage facility in Eden after the Mallacoota fire spread north.
"There is now 100,000 ton of woodchip alight worth about $6m and this facility employees 500 local Eden residents," he said.
"FRNSW has bought in from Sydney their HyTrans Super Pump unit, which will pump water from the nearby Pacific Ocean all the way up to the facility to enable firefighters to set up a number of large fire nozzles to assist to extinguish the fire.
"Crews have been working extremely hard to try to extinguish the fire and save as much of the woodchip and logs as possible."
