Cherry Gardens Bushfire

Mr MURRAY (Davenport) (16:05): I rise to make some necessarily brief remarks on the Cherry Gardens fire. As you would recall, Mr Speaker, along with the minister, you and I toured some parts of the fire-affected region and got to see the damage and also hear some of the stories regarding it. I am reminded of the commentary on the expiration of the 9/11 disaster, or terrorism event, when people talked about their first responders running towards danger. I want to pay tribute to the men and women, both voluntary and professional, who provided South Australia and our communities with not only their service but their successful service in controlling this fire, which was in large part in your seat of Heysen, sir, but it also greatly affected my own seat in the suburb of Cherry Gardens.

Some fire facts include that it was a 43° day and that a large number of the fires in question were started at about 4.30pm. Some 2,700 hectares were burned, and two houses, 19 buildings and two vehicles were lost. Of key importance is that 60 homes were saved, and that is an oft-forgotten part of the equation. On our behalf, these people stepped into harm's way and saved a large number of properties—60 homes in total.

Most of the area had not burned since the fires in 1983, so it had an extraordinarily high fuel load. As it was explained to us, the fire was very quickly big enough that it essentially formed its own weather pattern. It formed a pyrocumulus cloud, and that in its own right caused enormous issues with firefighting with winds going in different directions.

Some examples of running towards danger involved the Cherry Gardens CFS brigade, led by Lawrie Linggood and his team, at the Hicks Hill Road fire. They answered the call in about two minutes and were presented with a situation where there were flames on both sides of the road and beyond those flames local people were trapped. They acted quickly, and they plunged in and removed those people from danger.

We saw a burnt-out home on Mount Bold Road, and it was explained that 21 fire appliances were strung along a line, trying to provide asset protection for that particular home. Whilst the fire was engulfing the entire area and the home was on fire, there were people with breathing apparatus on inside trying to save it. Truly, I would not want to be in the area, let alone inside a burning home while the rest of the place was burning.

I thank and acknowledge the CFS. We thank them very much. There were brigades from all over the state, with about 500 CFS staff in total out there. We had aircraft support and bombers that were integral, and in particular I would like to acknowledge the Cherry Gardens CFS airstrip brigade for their work. As I said, I thank all the volunteers and professionals from the Department for Environment and Water and all the emergency services: the CFS, the MFS, SAPOL and the SES.

There was substantial and significant community support as well. One good example is the Hills Horse Evacuate Support group. They arose out of the Cudlee Creek fires. They had about 50-odd horses up there at one stage, so thank you to Kerry Hunt, Bek Smith and Annalise Johnstone. Thank you to Scott Filmer and the team, the Red Cross, the SES and businesses who donated. I am told a farmer from my home town of Mannum apparently drove up with a load of hay, slept overnight and delivered that for the horses there.

Cudlee Creek was instructive and gave rise to a lot of things. Flowing from that was some assistance provided by Dan Cregan and Rebekha Sharkie—thank you, and thank you also to Minister Tarzia for his support. Insofar as lessons are concerned, the Alert SA system works beautifully but needs better communications infrastructure. Firebugs are not firebugs: they are terrorists, in my view. The South Australian community deserves considerable support and says thank you immensely for the efforts of all those people who protected lives and property.