Cootamundra mattress, tyre fire cuts power, could burn for days

Southwest Slopes Rural Fire Service (RFS) members attended the fire at a waste management facility at 1 Turners Lane around 5.30pm on Saturday, working through the night with Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) to control the blaze.

Powerlines were damaged by the fire, cutting connection to around 75 nearby properties, with Essential Energy predicting service would be restored by 5pm Sunday.

Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) duty commander Bruce Dowling said it could be days before it is completely extinguished.

"It's a challenging fire, because there's a lot of heat in the pile," he said.

"This makes it very hard to extinguish, because the heat goes to a greater depth than we can penetrate with water.

"Because the pile's quite large it could take days until we completely extinguish it."

A spokesperson from NSW RFS on Sunday morning said there was upwards of 2500 tons of material at the site. The fire is currently under control, but not yet contained.

She said FRNSW were called to manage the incident because of HAZMAT concerns.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Mr Dowling said firefighters were taking all precautions to avoid being affected by the toxic smoke the fire was emitting.

He said he was thankful for the efforts of NSWRFS in helping contain the blaze.

"We've got firefighters from Turvey Park, Wagga, Gundagai, Cowra, as well as Cootamundra," he said.

"I'm a full time employee with FRNSW so I get paid whether there's a fire or not.

"The RFS are volunteers. This is time of a weekend they should be spending with their families, but instead they're out here protecting the community."

Site owner JLW have assisted firefighting efforts, bringing in heavy equipment to cap the fire.

Essential Energy were contacted, but did not respond prior to publication.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: