Cameron Devey from the South Australian Country Fire Service says residents should be on high alert.
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TVTranscript
00:00 We haven't seen conditions like this for several years. It takes us back locally to conditions
00:07 that we saw when the Pinery Fire started. We know that we do have rain coming that is
00:12 forecast but unfortunately that Pinery Fire burnt for five hours and was devastating the
00:17 impacts that were seen broadly across the state and it was five hours before our firefighters
00:22 could actually make any impact on that fire. We've got catastrophic conditions rated for
00:26 the Eyre Peninsula, the Flinders, the Mid North, York Peninsula and the Riverland today.
00:31 We'll also see extreme conditions in the North East Pastoral, West Coast, Mount Lofty regions
00:38 and the Murraylands and Upper South East. The weather we've got no control over as you
00:42 can appreciate and most people would have heard Chief Officer Lachlan speak yesterday
00:46 that that was of great concern to him. We do have fires burning currently in Melrose,
00:51 Lockheel and Hamley Bridge. The Melrose Fire is of most concern to us and we have significant
00:57 resources including aviation resources working on that fire. We used our opportunity to call
01:03 for the National Large Air Tanker to come across from the eastern states and it's positioned
01:07 currently at Edinburgh should we require it to support the firefighting efforts. Just
01:12 going back to that conversation around preparedness, we've been planning for this all week. There's
01:16 extensive preparations being put into place. Our State Control Centre is activated as you
01:21 can probably see behind me. We're constantly talking to our local regions and the regions
01:25 are talking to our senior leadership within the volunteer cohort. It's never too late
01:29 to plan for a bushfire. We want residents, people travelling through areas to have a
01:33 plan. We want them to talk to their partners, their friends, their families and make sure
01:38 there's not just a plan for when they're at home but many people will be at work today
01:41 and we want to make sure that they've got a plan in place should people back at home
01:46 need to leave. And the advice that we have to if there's a fire coming, please leave
01:51 early, make the decision early. We do have the option of people moving to safer places
01:57 and ultimately places of last resort but I want to touch on that last resort conversation
02:01 is that it is exactly that. It would be an uncomfortable place for people to be during
02:05 a major bushfire and we can't anticipate that resources and other services will be in those
02:10 locations to support people there.
02:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]