It was happenstance that I found myself walking up from Broadway yesterday afternoon. As I came to the crest of the hill at Central Station, it became clear that something was wrong. Very wrong.

A small group of people were standing next to the lights, ignoring the green walk direction to cross and were instead lingering on the curb with their phones held aloft, filming. I turned to see a small amount of smoke rising behind Central Station. Maybe a car fire?

What's going on in Sydney? Huge fire near central. pic.twitter.com/FyU7z19y5u

— Alexandra Marshall (@ellymelly) May 25, 2023

Soon after, there was a loud explosion and the smoke turned thick and black, bulging out of the skyline. My first thought was that a helicopter might have crashed. I joined the crowd of lemmings silently filming the scene as the smoke became severe. There were no press. No emergency workers. Just flocks of humans watching curiously as the crisis unfolded.

The explosions continued until glimpses of flame crept above the silhouette of Central Station. There was a small gasp of awe among the group of spectators – which had grown considerably with almost no one walking down the street anymore. We had thought the fire was a fair way off, but the flames put the scale into perspective. Even the cars were forgetting to make use of the green lights as their drivers were too busy staring at the sudden burst of flame.

It looked close.

Yikes! Sydney fire out of control. pic.twitter.com/uQEt3HJ3ry

— Alexandra Marshall (@ellymelly) May 25, 2023

Within ten minutes, these had grown to fifty-foot-high flames roaring above the station, throwing embers and the occasional burning brick. We didn’t know it from this side of the station, but pandemonium was breaking out in Randle Street.

It all happened so quickly that there was nothing on the news, or even the usually reliable Twitter. It would be another five minutes before the first news helicopter arrived. All we had to go on for information were alarmed people hurrying out of the station. Many of these claimed that the historic Central Station had been destroyed. As this rumour spread through the crowd, the fire entered its full roar, exploding again with loud crashes. We could see glimpses of what looked like a large building completely engulfed.

Only now did we hear sirens start arriving. Police rescue pulled up in front of the station, lending weight to people’s fears that the beautiful heritage building had been destroyed. Then came the fire trucks. We could hear rather than see them as they pushed into the streets on the other side of the station. Traffic came to a standstill as they ran red lights and crossed over into oncoming traffic to reach the blaze.

By now the crowds watching the fire were huge. People had come out of their shops and houses to watch what has turned out to be the largest uncontrolled fire in the Sydney CBD in living memory.

Woah huge fire in the heart of Surry Hills right now in Sydney, sent by @annamccrea37 @abcnews @abcsydney. pic.twitter.com/HMQGwmvr2T

— Evelyn Leckie (@Evelyn_Leckie) May 25, 2023

Twenty minutes after noticing smoke, the flames began to die down. We all knew that whatever the fire had taken hold of was completely destroyed. Nothing survives that sort of rapid inferno.

With a news helicopter hovering above, it occurred to me that if I wanted to get home via the trains, I better leave pronto. No… I didn’t cross the road and attempt to enter Central Station like a few hopeful students… I walked to Town Hall instead and, two blocks away from the station, we heard two growling crashes echo through the streets of Sydney. The last time I heard something like that, it was a collapsing glacier in Antarctica

SURRY HILLS | Wall collapses as major fire engulfs seven-storey building. New video footage, released by FRNSW, shows the moment a wall from an engulfed building in Surry Hills came crashing down onto the street below. pic.twitter.com/mZeYGg1Kox

— Fire and Rescue NSW (@FRNSW) May 25, 2023

These booms were almost certainly the walls coming down on what we now know to be the heritage-listed former hat factory which had a development proposal in to turn the abandoned building into a luxury hotel. Whatever it was going to be, today it’s a hollowed-out piece of wreckage.

The 111-year-old building constructed in 1912 for RC Henderson went up like a Roman candle before collapsing into the street. Firefighters rushed to put out spot fires in adjacent properties and at the moment, it appears the only collateral damage was a ute parked in the street.

‘We have got the fire contained. That is to say, it will not be spreading to other buildings tonight. It will take a while to put out,’ said the Fire and Rescue NSW Deputy Commissioner, Jeremy Fewtrell. ‘There has been substantial building collapse. The fire still burning is covered by debris, it is at the bottom of the building. It is hard for us to reach in and get the water on the fire.’

Given the speed, size, and violence of the fire – it’s a miracle no one was hurt.

‘We stood in the road and watched briefly but then we heard the noise of the floors inside collapsing … it was really scary, traumatic, and shocking,’ said one witness, standing in Prince Alfred Park.

What I found interesting was the speed with which information travels in emergency situations. Humans are both social animals and rapid problem solvers. The first thing they do when confronted with a major problem is gather information and then filter through it for facts. We repeat everything, immediately, and compare our stories with those of the people around us. It’s a fascinating stress-test of the truth that very quickly narrows down the real story.

The same thing happened when I was working in Pitt Street during the Lindt Cafe terror attack. The shop staff and warehouse workers were all in mass-data collection mode. It’s truly a human instinct that exists to plot safe escape routes and make safer decisions.

It also gave me a different perspective on the human habit of standing around, loitering in the presence of a disaster. We are not just idiots waiting for the chaos to reach us, we are judging the scale of the problem.

This time, Sydney had a close call, but we learned some pretty worrying things about how quickly a disaster can unfold. The size and speed of the blaze caught everyone by surprise, with the fire well underway before emergency services arrived.

Today, the Daily Mail is reporting that someone saw a group of high school students running out of the building before it erupted into flames. At the moment, police cannot get anywhere near the remains of the factory, which are still on fire with several remaining walls threatening to collapse.

No doubt there will be a long and serious investigation into what happened, but it is a reminder that pieces of our history can be lost in mere moments. Our cities are as fragile as our society, all of which seems to be resting on the edge of breaking point.

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