LABOR candidate and Bridgetown local John Thorpe experienced a second near miss when the fires approached his property on Wednesday.
Mr Thorpe was in Boyup Brook when he saw what he described as a mushroom cloud of smoke going straight up in the air.
“I ducked into the Shire office to see if I could find out what it was, they said they couldn’t give an exact location, but it was in Bridgetown,” he said.
Mr Thorpe headed for home.
“It was quite worrying, the closer you got the more smoke there was,” he said.
Mr Thorpe got home and set about his emergency procedures, including setting up emergency power supplies to keep the pumps running.
He watched the smoke cloud approaching his property until the wind changed and turned it away.
“There was a lot of smoke, and a lot of worry not knowing where it was,” he said.
“The fire warnings were very good – there was mobile coverage, ABC radio and alerts on the phone.”
In the 2009 fires, Mr Thorpe said he was standing on his roof, hosing the roof down watching the water bombers when the fire scorched his boundary fence before changing direction.
“We were extremely lucky,” he said.
