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Fire at Barangaroo building site on Sydney Harbour Fierce Barangaroo fire fuels fear of crane collapse
(about 3 hours later)
Fire crews are tackling a massive, blaze at Barangaroo construction site on the Sydney Harbour foreshore. Extreme heat from a basement fire at Sydney’s Barangaroo construction site was preventing firefighters identifying the cause of a blaze that threatened to bring down a multi-storey crane.
Up to 20 fire brigade crews have been sent to tackle the blaze, which erupted at the harbourside site about 2pm, forcing the evacuation of workers. Authorities and developer Lend Lease said all workers had been evacuated from the site and there were no reports of injuries, while buildings around the site were also being emptied.
Fire and Rescue NSW’s Superintendent Ian Krimmer said a crane at the site was a “big concern”. He said there had been no injuries reported. More than 100 firefighters and 20 trucks were pumping water from surrounding streets to extinguish the blaze and targeting the bottom of the crane, which had been burning from 2pm.
“Crane collapses can be quite dramatic. They tend to twist and topple over. That twist means we can’t predict where it will fall.” A collapse zone around the 50-metre crane has been cleared. The fire forced a thick plume of smoke hundreds of metres in the air with about 500 site workers and 2,000 office workers from nearby buildings evacuated.
“Our big concern is keeping the bottom of crane cool, and we are fairly confident we are being successful at that,” Superintendent Krimmer said. “That crane has been exposed to an amount of heat and our engineers inform us that if it continues to be exposed to heat there could be a risk of the crane collapsing,” a Fire and Rescue spokesman, Ian Krimmer, said at the scene. “For that reason we have evacuated the surrounding areas.”
A spokeswoman for Lend Lease, the company that operates the site, said the fire broke out in the basement formwork at the southern end of the site. “The site has been evacuated and emergency services are on the site. All site workers have now been accounted for and there are no reported injuries,” she said. The crane was estimated to be about 25 storeys high at its present extension.
Images posted on social media show flames and smoke pouring out of the basement of a building under construction on Hickson Road. The fire is believed to have taken hold in wooden formwork, with temperatures reaching more than 1,000C. The fire was burning across two levels of the site, however the heat was so strong thermal imaging cameras had “blown out” and were unable to pinpoint the seat of the blaze.
Firefighters and police have blocked off parts of Hickson Road as they try to extinguish the blaze from above with an elevated water cannon. A spokeswoman for NSW Fire and Rescue called it “one of the worst kinds of fires to fight”. Hazmat crews were monitoring the smoke, and lasers aimed at the top of the crane would tell rescuers if it moved or not.
“The temperatures are too high to get crews inside, so you’ve got to fight it purely from the outside,” she said. “Crane collapses can be quite dramatic if they occur,” Krimmer said. “They tend to twist and then topple over. That twisting means we can’t predict where it will fall, if it was to fall.”
Clouds of smoke hundreds of metres high could be seen across the city’s skyline. Firefighters and police shut nearby roads, including major arteries to the city, causing peak-hour traffic chaos.
The CFMEU’s assistant secretary, Rob Kera, told the ABC a “full site safety meeting” would be held at 7am tomorrow before work on the site resumes. The Barangaroo area is being redeveloped as a residential and retail hub, with plans for a “high-rollers” casino owned by billionaire James Packer.
The site is being redeveloped as a residential and retail hub, with plans for a high-rollers’ casino owned by billionaire James Packer. Lend Lease’s chief operating officer, Dan Labbad, said engineers would begin dismantling the crane on Wednesday night, even if engineers said it was still structurally sound.
Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union assistant state secretary Rob Kera said workers were upset about the blaze.
“We
conducted a full audit of the evacuation procedure on this site. To say
it was an absolute disgrace is an understatement,” he said.
“The men at this point and time are pretty upset, they are pretty devastated.
“Our job at the end of the day is to ensure the safety of our members.”