Homes in fiery path reduced to rubble and iron

Although the weather was cooler yesterday, allowing firefighters to carry out back-burning operations across the Blue Mountains, the air was smoky and swirled with ash. Photo / AFP

Harry Fuller is showing me around what used to be his family's Blue Mountains home - now just a jumble of rubble and corrugated iron.

"This was the kitchen," he says, pointing to a blackened sink and a pile of smashed crockery. "This was the lounge-room. And this was our front verandah."

The 19-year-old was at home watching TV last Thursday when a huge bushfire advanced on the picturesque hamlet of Winmalee. Grabbing a few photos and his bass guitar, he jumped in his car and fled. Not long afterwards, fire roared through. Nearly half the houses in Fuller's street, Emma Parade, were destroyed. Fortunately, no one was injured.

There has been little time to mourn lost pets and possessions - or, in the case of those whose homes survived, to reflect on good luck. Residents were grimly battening down the hatches yesterday ahead of extreme winds and high temperatures forecast for today, which firefighters fear could cause further widespread destruction.

Flames consumed Rebecca Cameron's front garden and fence last week. Her house was saved by her neighbour who pumped water out of his pool to extinguish spot fires caused by flying embers.

"We were lucky, really lucky," she said, as she hosed her yard and roof tiles yesterday.

A little way down Emma Parade, Margaret Schutte, 82, was packing a suitcase and turning her ute around in the driveway in case she and her husband, Jan, needed to make a quick getaway.

The couple were out shopping when baking heat and high winds whipped up bushfires across New South Wales last week. They returned to find their home intact. "I don't know why. God must have been with us," said Schutte.

Jan, an 85-year-old Dutch immigrant, was shaken by the scenes of devastation in their street. "He says it's like a war zone, it looks like when he was a little boy and Hitler was dropping his bombs," said Schutte.

Although the weather was cooler yesterday, allowing firefighters to carry out back-burning operations across the Blue Mountains, the air was smoky and swirled with ash.

On the main street of Springwood, also hard hit last week, shoppers coughed and rubbed their eyes. Several nursing homes were evacuated. All local schools will be closed today.

The NSW Rural Fire Service warned that conditions would be "as bad as it gets", with temperatures in the mid to high 30s and wind gusts of up to 100km/h.

Shane Fitzsimmons, the RFS commissioner, urged people in threatened areas to leave, preferably in the morning, and remain vigilant.

"On days like tomorrow, minutes matter," he said.

In Winmalee, Harry Fuller's father, Ron, sifted through the rubble of his bedroom, searching - against the odds - for his wife's jewellery. He held up a fragment of bone china - the outstretched arm of a Royal Doulton dancer figurine - and a charred page from a book on Impressionist art.

"We had a beautiful Aboriginal art collection," said Fuller, a retired ABC radio journalist, gazing at the remains of his home.

But he is already looking to the future, and planning to rebuild in the same spot, which has a panoramic view of the Grose Valley.

"It's no different to living on a flood plain," he said. "You know a flood's going to come some time. If you live in the bush, you know the bush is going to burn some time."