CFA and International Power Hazelwood (IPRH) crews have made excellent progress late yesterday and overnight on containing a fire burning in non-operational areas of the Hazelwood Mine south of Morwell.
Weather conditions have finally eased allowing fire-fighters the opportunity to black out large areas of the fire base.
Greg Flynn, CFA Incident Controller, said, “The fire has now reduced in intensity and we are describing the situation as ‘under control’. We will continue to work on suppression today and deploy some specialised thermal imaging equipment to identify any remaining hot spots.
“The focus now is on making significant progress in the more benign weather conditions today,” Mr Flynn said.
Mr Flynn said there are still up to 70 CFA personal working alongside Hazelwood and contractor employees to extinguish the fire.
“We can now begin planning to review our resource commitment and we would like to thank the crews who have endured some extreme conditions to help bring this fire to its current stage,” he said.
The fire is in a non-operational coal face at the Hazelwood Mine and has not damaged any operational infrastructure. Power supplies and mining operations at IPRH have not been affected.
For further CFA information contact CFA Media on 5330 3124
For further IPRH information contact Neil Lawson on 5135 5093
Information Release 17/09/2008 0900 hrs
Message Authorised By: Greg Flynn, Incident Controller
Message Authorised By: Graeme York, CEO IPRH
