Homes have been lost along with thousands of hectares of bush and farmland in an inferno that has swept through Queensland's central coast.
A hundred firefighters will arrive from NSW on Tuesday to help exhausted crews battle a monster blaze between Bundaberg and Gladstone.
The Deepwater area bushfire started on Thursday and has already burned 17,000 hectares.
Two homes have been destroyed, with more likely to have been destroyed and further damage expected.
"The fire front is the easy part, we can see that and manage it," fire service operations director Paul Smeath told locals at a meeting in nearby Agnes Water on Monday.
"It's the ember storms that happen back behind it (that are difficult."
Hundreds of locals forced to flee their homes have been met with an outpouring of support on social media from residents offering to house them and their families.
NSW firefighters sent to relieve crews
NSW is sending 100 firefighters north to support exhausted crews, and they're due to arrive early on Tuesday.
Two evacuation centres are open at Miriam Vale and Agnes Water, but only a handful of people are there at this stage, with most opting to stay with family and friends.
Debra and Bob Wait said they feared they would die when the fire encroached on their Deepwater Road property.
"I reckon another five minutes and we would've been dead because we couldn't breathe," Ms Wait has told the ABC.
"It burnt all the hairs off my arms when I raced down the paddock to let other horses out it was just raining little white pieces of ash."
The Wartburg State School at Baffle Creek is closed due to the fire.
