Banks residents prepare for Orroral Valley fire to hit

The residents of Bellchambers Crescent in the suburb of Banks look across the bush at the fire.

The street is on the edge of the suburb closest to Tharwa - and the fire.

They stand in the street and see the smoke by day and the flicker of flames by night. Many have already packed emergency supplies into their cars.

On the roof of one house, Marcus Bennett put in a sprinkler for his mother, Sheree. She was worried about the nearby eucalypts falling on her home in a fire.

"They call them 'widow makers' because they aren't deep in the ground".

Further up the street, one woman came out of the door saying: "I'm leaving now. You can see how close it is - close enough to be worrying. I don't want to be one of those people who makes work for the emergency services. You never know what you're coming back to. I want to be out of it. I don't want to do this at night."

Her neighbour, Ian Kyle, wasn't unduly worried. "We've got our plan in place," he said. He had packed the car with essentials. He said that at night he could see the flames on Mount Tennent.

Across the road, Julia Heffernan said: "We've got a good view from here. We can see that it's coming."

Angela Warren spends a couple of hours in her house fretting and then goes out, sits on a stone and just watches the smoke.

"Gazing at it makes me feel like I have information. It makes me feel like I know where it is," she said.

"My car's packed with my kids' school uniforms for Monday because I don't know where we're going to be. It just makes me very nervous. I'm watering the lawn and putting water out for animals if they decide to drink. I've had roos on my front lawn."

She is trying to hide her anxiety from her two teenage children but "they can tell I'm anxious but I'm trying to keep some normality".

"I'm looking at social media too much," she said.

Lisa Brill backs on to bush land that doesn't stop until Tharwa.

She says she's not so worried - but she has packed her most treasured memories in her car, including a note from her daughter saying: "I love you."

She was worried on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning there were burnt leaves in her back yard.

"I was surprised at how much ash and burnt leaves there were in my courtyard on Wednesday," she said.

If the fire comes, she said she would grab her dog Pippa and drive to her parents in Torrens.

She says she's not worried but "I've put a few things in the car - mementos, laptop photos, overnight bag".

"I did contact the real estate agent to see that we are insured," she said.

And she was hosing the outside vegetation down "just to keep things a bit moist".