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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-02-05 Daily Xml
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BUNDALEER FOREST BUSHFIRE

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (15:34): I rise today to advise the house about a very serious fire in the Bundaleer Forest and the surrounding district on Wednesday 16 January. It started around about 4pm and I have to say that it was an exceptionally stressful time for people in that district all through Wednesday afternoon, overnight Wednesday and pretty much all day Thursday.

It was a very serious fire that actually burnt 2,522 hectares of land; of those, 729 hectares were in Bundaleer Forest and 1,793 hectares were private land. About 16 private landowners had land burned and, very tragically, nearly 500 sheep were burned. Fortunately, no lives and no buildings were lost, but any loss of flesh and blood is particularly hard. One landowner was hit exceptionally hard, as the majority of those sheep were his, so I am sure all members of this house feel for that family.

I also thank the hundreds of people who helped. Crews from 72 CFS crews from 72 different towns all around the state came to support and help the people of Jamestown, which was absolutely wonderful, so I very warmly and sincerely thank them. Of course, many other community volunteers—just regular mums and dads, boys and girls, and grandparents—helped with food, transport and equipment, as did local businesses.

ForestrySA and the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources staff in their professional capacity came and helped too. The work they do is very important because they are usually the ones mopping up and picking up the pieces after the volunteers and the CFS have the majority of the fire under control.

It is also worth pointing out that there is—as there always is—a small amount of criticism about the way the fire was handled, and I certainly urge the government departments to have a very thorough and very open investigation of this fire. There will always be people who say, 'Well, if it was handled differently it could have been stopped here,' or, 'If it was handled differently it could have been stopped there.'

They may or may not be right; what is done is done, but the important thing is that the government has a full, frank and open investigation, and I think that investigation should start with the fact that the fire, it is believed, was started because another fire, from a lightning strike on 27 November which was under control but not completely out, was not monitored properly. That is the belief locally, but I will wait for the report to have that confirmed, of course.

The key point here is that I believe the government has very seriously underfunded and understaffed our forests. The two forests in the electorate of Stuart that I represent, Bundaleer forest and Wirrabara forest, are understaffed. No doubt the people who work there do the very best they can, but they do not have a permanent and trained firefighting resource to call on in situ. They call on other members of FSA and DEWNR from other parts of the state to come to help. They have an absolutely skeleton staff there, so of course that skeleton staff was not able to monitor the fire from 27 November, which burned slowly for another three weeks and then turned into this very serious bushfire that threatened stock and homes and destroyed property.

It is also important to point out that this is the second fire we have had in a ForestrySA property. Back in May we had a fire at Wirrabara which was started by a government department doing a burn-off—and I do believe that burn-offs are a very important part of fire management and disaster prevention—but it got out of control and that is what started the fire. Now we have had another fire, which it is believed was not monitored properly because there were not sufficient local staff to be able to do it.

I think the government has to have a very hard and serious look at themselves and this issue, and I await the information that comes from their reports. Two fires in such a short period of time in forests which, it appears, could have been averted are very serious issues. It was stated after the Wirrabara fire that some track clearing had not been done properly in Wirrabara. Well, guess what? It appears that was the case at Bundaleer also. It was stated in the report from the government after the Wirrabara fire that one of the firefighting problems was that track maps for the CFS and the DEWNR staff were not available. Well, guess what? We have had another fire and I am told that the same problem existed again.

With a little luck, we are closing in on the end of our bushfire season, and let's hope we have no more bushfires. Bushfire prevention and management are something that every single member of the house should take seriously and work towards for next summer.

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