Operation clean up DPR/TV/566

More Regular Army troops flew into Hobart at the weekend to assist in the bushfire emergency, mainly on cleaning-up operations. Sixty-one of them arrived in a chartered Electra from Melbourne and among these were seventeen members of the Women's Royal Australian Army Corps and Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps. Ninety one members of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, were flown in by RAAF Hercules aircraft from Edinburgh, South Australia. They will take over many of the duties which have been performed by members of the Citizens Military Force, who completeed their annual two week's camp on Sunday. Among the burnt-out buildings, petrol bowsers stood with one-thousand gallons of gasoline still intact in underground tanks. The major task for the troops is on cleaning-up operations around destroyed homes and factories, like this sawmill at Bridgewater. A live hand grenade was found among the debris and later destroyed by an Army ammunition expert. Cleaning-up is a huge task even though brick chimneys are the only solid evidence that homes once stood in many of the burnt-out areas.