South Coast resident Gayle Loose has a sinking feeling heading into this year’s fire season in New South Wales.
Key points:
- Locals say their calls for vegetation buffer zones along key roads have gone unanswered
- They fear road access will be lost during the next bushfire
- Transport for NSW says it has removed 6,000 trees in the southern region and trimmed 10,000
“Deja vu, I think, is probably the best way to say it,” she said.
She fears that calls for change after the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020 have “fallen on deaf ears”.
Four years ago, Ms Loose and other residents of Sussex Inlet were trapped in their town after the Currowan bushfire cut off exit roads.
Terrifying footage captured the moment the bushfire blazed over the Princes Highway towards the Sussex Inlet community on New Year’s Eve in 2019.
“When the road is on fire no-one can get in or out, and then the roads shut after the fires come through because the powerlines are down and there are trees across the road,” Ms Loose said.
A change in wind ultimately saved the township, but for 10 days they were cut off.
“There’s no power, no fuel, no food,” Ms Loose said.
Three people in the region died in the fire and a total of 500,000 hectares of bushland was burned.
‘Back to square one’
Ms Loose said she and other South Coast locals had called for trees along roads to be cut back significantly after Black Summer, and the region’s Dean’s Gap bushfire in 2013.
But she said nothing had changed at the intersection of the highway and the road to Sussex Inlet.
“The vegetation is back up to the road and the highway again and they should be getting in and getting it back, making sure all the roads are accessible,” Ms Loose said.
“We’ve had no rain and with the dry westerly winds, everything’s back to square one again.”
Transport for NSW chief customer officer Roger Weeks said the agency had removed 6,000 trees in the southern region, trimmed 10,000 trees, and slashed and reduced fuel load across about 50 million square metres in the lead-up to NSW’s bushfire season.
“The work we’re doing is preparing us as best we can for these bushfires,” he said.
Local Rural Fire Service Inspector Matthew Reeves said the region was facing different conditions to the four-year drought that preceded Black Summer.
“While we’ve seen some drying we don’t have that massive fuel moisture deficit so that is going to work somewhat in our favour,” he said.
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Calls for buffer zones
Andrew Constance was the NSW minister for roads during the devastating 2019-20 bushfire season and said the highway needed a buffer zone cleared, as did roads leading to communities like Sussex Inlet.
“I think bureaucracy has been negligent and, in some ways, absolutely belligerent,” he said.
“It’s a no-brainer. If they don’t take action, lives will be lost on the road.
“We’re going to see potentially hundreds of people killed in cars if we don’t see action.”
Mr Constance caused controversy as a former state transport minister when he ordered his top bureaucrat to clear millions of trees along every highway in NSW, which the agency said they did not have the power to do.
Mr Weeks did not comment on buffer zones, but defended the level of road preparation that had been undertaken in the Shoalhaven region.
“I think the work that has been done has taken into account the recommendations from the [2020 NSW bushfire] inquiry,” he said.
Ms Loose said the community did not feel listened to.
“All the old hands say clean the roads up, clean under the powerlines, push it back,” she said.
“It’s not a new idea. It is something we’ve been calling for for a long time.”
Mr Constance said the department should commit to a buffer zone.
“Push the trees back now and make sure that, if there is a fire come through, there’s not dead trees all over the bloody roadway with the potential for people to be trapped,” he said.
Emergency Service Minister Jihad Dib said he would continue to discuss the viability of buffer zones with Transport for NSW, but said evidence-based preparation was underway.
He said the government invested $10 million to employ hazard reduction crews in July in the lead-up to the bushfire season.
“We have taken it seriously. As I speak now there’s hazard reduction going on,” he said.
Communities take control
Katrina Walsh lost her home in Conjola Park when the fire tore through the community on New Year’s Eve 2019.
The local council has cleared some bush back from the single access road ahead of the fire season, but Ms Walsh said there were other planning gaps.
“There are still no evacuation plans for Lake Conjola and Conjola Park and that’s 5 kilometres away down a one-lane-in, one-lane-out road with bush on both sides,” she said.
She has now applied for a grant from the government to train the community to respond in an emergency.
“We can’t rely on the fact that an ambulance can come because they probably can’t get here,” Ms Walsh said.
“We can’t rely on people having support.”
Local RFS superintendent Matthew Reeves said bushfires were too unpredictable for agencies to employ pre-planned evacuations.
“If evacuations have to occur, and it’s certainly not something we rely on or plan for, they’re very dynamic based on the fire,” he said.
“This is why we come back to the leaving early option.”
He said the community was as prepared as it could be for the upcoming bushfire season.
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