Torrential rain over three days has already put out one megablaze, the Gospers Mountain fire

This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

A deluge of rain and wild weather could extinguish all remaining fires in New South Wales by the end of the week, the Rural Fire Service hopes.

Torrential rain over three days in the state, which has been ravaged by bushfires and endured a prolonged period of drought, has already extinguished one megablaze, with the Gospers Mountain fire that has burned for months in the Hawkesbury declared out on Monday.

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Dams in the greater Sydney area, where water restrictions have been in place due to the drought, have also received more than their entire annual rainfall for 2019 in the space of a weekend.

On Monday, Sydney’s water storage levels reached 64%, up 22 points on the previous week.

While the rain has been welcome news for firefighters, it has created chaos elsewhere – causing flooding, power outages and property damage.

The NSW RFS said on Monday there were still 33 active fires in the state, with five of those uncontained.

Only a week ago, more than 60 fires were burning across NSW and 33 of those were uncontained.

The five fires that are still burning out of control are all in the Bega Valley and Snowy Valley area in the state’s south. They include the Border fire and the Big Jack Mountain fire.

An RFS spokesman said that “all going well” it was likely those five fires would be out “in the next 48 hours”.

He said it there was optimism that all remaining fires in the state would remain at a contained status by the end of the week. It was possible all of them could be extinguished.

“It would be an absolute miracle. We hope so,” he said.

“Certainly all contained. We’re hopeful to get to the stage where we can call them out.”

Firefighters have faced an unprecedented season and have been battling blazes since July last year.

On Monday, the RFS said some of the biggest fires were now extinguished. They include the Gospers Mountain fire in the Hawkesbury, the Currowan fire in the Shoalhaven, the Green Wattle Creek fire in Wollondilly, the Myall Creek Road fire (Richmond Valley), the Erskine Creek fire (Blue Mountains), the Kerry Ridge fire (Muswellbrook) and the Morton fire (Wingecarribee).

The spokesman said there would still be some work for remote area crews to extinguish smaller materials such as smouldering tree stumps and logs in some locations.

He said the significant rainfall was likely to lead to more benign conditions for the remainder of the season, but stressed there were still months to go.

“As we’ve seen in the last couple of years, we’ve still had bushfires threaten homes in March and April,” he said.

“We know all it takes is a couple of weeks of warm and windy conditions.”

The wild weather triggered widespread chaos over the weekend.

On Monday afternoon, Ausgrid was continuing to deal with 3,100 hazards, including fallen powerlines, fallen trees, damaged wires and extensive flash flooding.

The company had restored power to 61,000 customers and was continuing efforts to reconnect 79,000 still without power.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued warnings for abnormally high tides for most of the NSW coast on Monday evening and severe thunderstorm warnings were in place for the northern rivers region and parts of the mid-north coast.

Some parts of the state have had up to 700mm of rainfall since Wednesday including Robertson, in the southern highlands, which saw 698mm of rain – 500mm of which was across the weekend alone.

Pottsville, in the northern rivers region, was battered with close to 605mm of rain, while the central tablelands copped 631mm since Wednesday.

The BoM said floods around Sydney over the weekend and into Monday were the most significant that had been seen in about 30 years.

Warragamba dam’s storage levels had reached 60.7% on Monday, up 17.7% on the previous week. This time last year, the dam’s storage levels were sitting at 61.4%.

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In a statement on Sunday, WaterNSW said ash and debris generated by recent bushfires around the Warragamba area would not affect water quality.

Two silt curtains are in place to intercept ash run-off.

“While it is likely some ash and debris has been washed into the upper reaches of the Warragamba system, there is no impact on the water quality being supplied for treatment. Any surface debris is being avoided by extracting water from 30m below the surface as a precaution,” the statement said.

Prospect Dam is more than 90% full, while Woronora dam to Sydney’s south is almost 60% full, jumping 25 percentage points.

Rain was easing in Sydney on Monday but was forecast to continue during the week. The weather system responsible for the flooding around Sydney was moving south on Monday into the south coast and into the East Gippsland region of Victoria.

But Adam Morgan, a meteorologist at the Bom, said the rainfall totals in those areas were not expected to be “anything near as heavy as what we’ve seen over the past few days”.