Winter Blaze Tragedy: NSW Fire Deaths Climb to 7, Heartbreak Strikes Cammeray

Time and date of Incident: 5:26pm on August 12 2023Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) advises an elderly man has died following a house fire at Cammeray, on Sydney’s Lower North Shore, last weekend.

The blaze broke out inside a unit on the third floor of a Miller Street complex just before 5:30pm last Saturday (12 August).

FRNSW deployed more than 28 firefighters and seven fire trucks to the scene.

Fire crews forced their way inside the smoke-filled unit and rescued a 94-year-old man, who had sustained burns and smoke inhalation.

They provided first aid before NSW Ambulance paramedics arrived and took him to hospital.

Firefighters stopped the blaze from spreading before extinguishing it.

Experts from FRNSW’s Fire Investigation and Research Unit (FIRU) conducted a detailed examination of the scene.

They have determined a wheat bag – a device typically heated in a microwave then applied to the body for warmth – may have ignited while being used by the resident.

FIRU has also established that the unit was fitted with smoke alarms, which activated during the incident.

However, fire stations were only alerted once smoke escaped from the unit and triggered automatic fire alarms within the unit complex.

Today, FRNSW has been notified that the elderly man had succumbed to his injuries in hospital.

His death is the seventh fire-related fatality across the state this winter.

FRNSW is urgently reminding the public about the correct use of wheat bags, including:

• Don’t overheat wheatbags by placing them in microwaves longer than specified by the manufacturer
• Don’t leave wheatbags unsupervised in microwaves
• Don’t let anyone, particularly children or the elderly, sleep with a wheat bag
• Don’t use wheat bags to warm your bed up, as it may spontaneously ignite
• Don’t reheat wheatbags before they have properly cooled.
• A wheatbag should be cooled down on a non-combustible surface before storing.

More safety information is available via the FRNSW website: https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/page.php?id=9047

Additional winter fire safety resources can be found here: https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/page.php?id=9284