UPDATE - 5.30pm
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A former Tumbarumba man who was visiting his parents on Tuesday said many people were "caught off guard" when they started getting early morning bushfire alerts urging them to leave.
Jamie Mitchell told The Daily Advertiser that he decided not to take any chances with his wife and 18-month-old son when Rural Fire Service text messages started arriving at 4am.
"We were down for Christmas...it all happened fairly quickly as the alerts started coming in at four and by 7.30 and 8am we were really trying to get out of there," he said.
"I think it caught a lot of people in town off guard. The local rodeo was on tomorrow, which has been cancelled, and a lot of people are camping in the area at this time of year over at Blowering Dam.
"I don't think people realised how quick it would come or how dangerous is was. It was a scary one. It was definitely not worth hanging around with a small child so we packed up."
MORE FIRE COVERAGE:
Mr Mitchell left for Albury where the Hume Inn Motel gave him free accommodation along with other people who were fleeing the bushfires.
"You could tell in town that there was a bit of panic and you could get a sense of the heightened kind of fear," he said.
"There were a lot of people filling up in the morning; there's only one petrol station in town and it doesn't make it easy to do that.
"There's only one supermarket in town and there were people running in to grab supplies at the last minute and the staff were trying to shut down and get home and police were trying to get them to close.
"It was a bit of an eerie feeling at 8am when it was all going down."
Mr Mitchell said his father worked at the prison had he had been unable to contact him all day but they lived on the west side of town and had a "pretty easy escape route to Wagga and Albury".
"People that I know and my family know have lost places or had near misses. Friends of ours have a vineyard, their house is fine but they lost parts of the vineyard and they were only a five minute drive away," Mr Mitchell said.
"There was a big conga line of cars headed out towards Wagga and everyone was taking it steady but there was a guy in a Commodore who crossed over double lines and passed cars for a few hundred metres on the wrong side of the road heading up the crest of a hill.
"It was just pure insanity. It was dangerous but just the selfishness of it all. If there was a crash it would have been major road that would have been shut down completely.
"There are not many options to get out with all the road closures."
Earlier - 2.43pm
The Tumbarumba Hotel was sheltering a dozen local residents, backpackers and their pets on Tuesday afternoon as a bushfire approached with "six streets" of the town.
The pub opened its doors at 8am and put on tea, coffee and sandwiches for people seeking shelter.
Tumbarumba Hotel publican Sue Scanlon told The Daily Advertiser just after 1.30pm that the town was facing threats from fires that could also cut off mobile service.
"I'm standing at the back of my pub looking up towards the phone towers and there are a hell of a lot of flames there," she said.
"I'm a registered disaster relief point. So far we have got about a dozen people and I have got six more rooms so we are expecting to get more people.
"I have got motorbike lockup sheds at the back of my hotel, so they are full of dogs and my laundry is full of cats.
"We are just sorta watching these flames and it makes it particularly hard for me...do I grab my own dog and cat and run? What do I do?"
Ms Scanlon said the blueberry season had also brought between 200 to 300 backpackers to the area for fruit picking work and they were now having to be evacuated or were seeking shelter.
The Rural Fire service declared emergency warnings for Tumbarumba, Darlow and the Talbingo area and declared it was too late for people to leave as firefighters tried to slow down a 51,000 hectare blaze.
Ms Scanlon said she had not personally seen any houses or farms destroyed by fire but had heard of properties being lost.
"Where I am standing, the fire is six streets away," she said.
"If anybody knows how to handle these sorts of fires, it's our RFS and the Forestry [firefighters].
As the bushfire approaches the town, some of its residents could lose access to vital information and emergency alerts through the Fires Near Me smartphone app.
Ms Scanlon said Telstra mobile phone services were still working but Optus and Vodaphone had stopped.
"At the back of Tumba is a hill with all the phone towers and that's exactly where the fires are going now, so I would suggest that if it gets too much up there then Telstra would go as well," she said.
The Tumbarumba Hotel had a large function booked for Tuesday but had now donated most of the food and drink to other fire shelters.
"I was to have 120 people in for a buffet lunch for a family reunion. I kept a third of it and gave two thirds to the church and the Salvation Army to take down to the sports oval to feed people.
"I gave them a couple of slabs of soft drink to try and calm people down a bit."
Ms Scanlon said she had a plan if the fire overwhelmed the town.
"I just finished talking to my mother in Bendigo and I said 'to tell the truth, if it gets that bad and we can't get out, I've got all the underground cellars and tunnels still under the pub',"
"I'll grab a case of wine and down I go."