BY DAKOTA TAIT
Firefighters are assessing the aftermath of a blaze which destroyed the former wool sheds on at Wickham yesterday afternoon and raged throughout the night.
Initial crews attended the fire at the four-storey warehouses after an automatic alarm went off around 2:30pm on Tuesday afternoon.
Attempts to defeat the fire internally failed, and firefighters retreated to combat the fire externally.
Residents living on local streets were forced to flee their homes and seek shelter elsewhere, including at an evacuation centre at the nearby Goodlife Church.
Crews are continuing to combat the blaze, with the site believed to still be burning underneath its collapsed internal floors.
Fire and Rescue NSW Chief Superintendent Terry Farley says they're working to assess the safety of the situation and began remediating the site.
"We're working with council now and structural engineers to confirm
the stability of the structure," Mr Farley said.
"As you can imagine, once the building
collapsed within each other, and there's no roof, there's nothing
holding up the sides of the walls, so we're working with council to make
that safe.
"We've also set up atmospheric monitoring around the site to
establish a safe zone.
"We're working with the other agencies - EPA,
council, police, Safe Work Australia, and the Ampol tank farm - to bring
the incident to a conclusion."
Firefighters are being commended for their efforts to contain the fire and prevent damage and spread to the neighbouring Ampol fuel depot.
It's understood the tanks were around thirty metres away from the blaze.
Firefighters announced their victory on that front around 9pm on Tuesday night.
Mr Farley says the scene could have been "catastrophic".
"There's millions of litres of fuel on site there," Mr Farley said.
"It contains the main diesel line that supplies the City of Newcastle, so our firefighters along with the Ampol staff have done an outstanding job to just limit the exposure of that fire.
"It used to be an old wool store, so some of that timber and that would have been soaked with lanolin and all that from the previous generations.
"It's now used as a storage facility, so as you can imagine a lot of households unfortunately have lost their property, and that would have contributed to the high fuel load within that building."
No injuries have been reported in the incident.
An exclusion zone remains in place around the area.
Most residents haven't yet returned to their homes, though Robert Street has re-opened to households.
But there's now some concern of asbestos contamination, after the roof of the former wool sheds was destroyed.
Newcastle City Police Commander and Site Controller Detective Superintendent Wayne Humphrey says residents should remain vigilant.
"The major concern at the moment is that the roof was Super Six, as I understand it, so that's an asbestos-based material," Mr Humphrey said.
"We've received reports that to the west of the fire location, with would have been in accordance with the wind direction yesterday, that there could be some asbestos contamination of residences and schools.
"As the rest of the State prays for the rain to go away, we're actually pretty happy it's raining at the moment, because there's an impact on wetting down the asbestos, that's one of the mitigation factors, so that rain is welcome at the moment."
The EPA intend to create a website for residents to report possible asbestos contamination.
It's not currently known how long clean-up efforts will take.
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The aftermath of the blaze on Annie Street.
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