“Can I say to anyone thinking of deliberately lighting a fire; you’ll get caught and the penalties are severe, including serious jail time,” he said.

“After the fires at Wooroloo, after the week of COVID, after flooding in the north, to go and light a fire near Yallingup if that’s what’s happened, it’s a disgusting, disgraceful act.”

Loading

It has been a tough week for emergency crews and first responders across the state as they grappled with a monster bushfire in the Perth Hills and extensive flooding and damaging weather in the state’s north all during a five-day lockdown sparked by a positive COVID-19 case.

More than 30 people have already been rescued by emergency personnel near Minilya Roadhouse, where extensive flooding has washed away bitumen roads and cut off access to Carnarvon.

Images captured by stranded travellers show entire sections of road wiped out by fast running water, car roofs protruding from deep floodwater and helicopters deployed to rescue motorists.

The full extent of the damage to roads like North West Coastal Highway is yet to be determined but authorities believe access to Carnarvon from the south could be cut off for up to five days and from the north for several weeks.

Australian Bureau of Meteorology senior meteorologist Neil Bennett said the floods had posed significant issues for residents in the Gascoyne and were due to continue for some time but the rainfall had been a godsend for firefighters in the state’s south.

“The floods in the Carnarvon area are extensive... certainly in the top 5 floods that we’ve been experienced in the last 50 years in the area,” he said.

“The rivers will take some time to subside but the good news is we are not expecting any more heavy falls of rain in that area for the foreseeable future.”

The tropical low that caused the flooding is currently travelling south along the state’s coast and is due to impact Perth’s west late on Sunday, bringing gusts of up to 100 km/hour along the coast.

Parts of the Midwest including Moora and Jurien Bay experienced heavy rain on Saturday night with falls in excess of 50 millimetres and strong winds, while most of the South West recorded 30 millimetres of rainfall.

The front is expected to dump between 20 to 40 millimetres of rainfall over the Wooroloo fire site over the weekend, where the damage of the devastating bushfire is being assessed by authorities.

Mr McGowan said the total cost of the destruction was still unknown but estimated it would be several millions of dollars, adding the government would apply for national disaster recovery funding to assist with the clean-up bills in both Wooroloo and the Gascoyne.

West Australian taxpayers will also have to pay the operational costs of the air tankers deployed from interstate to assist with the Wooroloo fire.

“But it’s money well spent. Those things were amazing. And what that allowed was for property to be saved, but more importantly, lives to be saved,” Mr McGowan said.

More than 80 homes were lost in the inferno, which burned for six days straight and displaced hundreds of local residents.