Tinder-dry state unprepared for inferno, says CFS
South Australian landowners are dangerously unprepared for a bushfires, one of the state’s top firefighters warns.
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South Australia is tinder dry and ready to burn in conditions rarely experienced, leaving landowners dangerously unprepared, one of the state’s top fire officers says.
The warning comes as SA prepares to swelter through another heatwave.
Firefighters battling blazes at Cudlee Creek and Kangaroo Island are likely to face challenging conditions.
Country Fire Service assistant chief officer Brenton Eden told The Advertiser that today and Monday were shaping up to be the days of greatest concern.
He said while Monday was not yet forecast to be a repeat of the catastrophic conditions that fanned the Cudlee Creek fire, landowners needed to be prepared and vigilant.
“Cudlee Creek has been the most classic example recently, together with Yorketown, of fires that have started from a very small ignition source,” Mr Eden said.
“The CFS responded within minutes to them and had no capacity to bring them under control.
“On these days now, we are seeing fire behaviour across SA, Victoria and NSW that we haven’t seen and experienced for a long time.
“These fires are now travelling immense distances and covering an enormous amount of the landscape before people are prepared either to defend their property or to get out.”
Mr Eden said the two fires that have scorched a combined 42,295ha of land at Cudlee Creek, in the Adelaide Hills, and Duncan, on Kangaroo Island, would continue to burn for weeks.
He said residents had told the CFS about their shock of not being ready to take action during a bushfire.
“People are not prepared emotionally or physically for the responses they need to take in a hurry,” Mr Eden said.
“And then they get disoriented and they don’t know what to do and that’s when we see injuries and worse.
“We just can’t have a fire appliance at everybody’s house during these events.
“It’s tinder dry and ready to burn and that’s what we’re seeing at the moment.”
The CFS today issued a downgraded advice message for the Cudlee Creek fire and revised the total land burned to 23,295ha. But Mr Eden said the fire was not contained and the threat was far from over.
“We would expect that (it will go back to a watch-and- act situation) because nature is telling us that we’re going to get a period of much hotter weather,” he said.
“We’re going to see a front go across the state (on Monday) like we did last Friday.
“We’re going to see lighting, we’re going to have gusty winds. It’s not going to be as bad as last Friday but we’ve all those elements coming back.”
Mr Eden said complex wind patterns would be a challenge for firefighters tomorrow.
“We’re really concentrating in the next 72 hours on those areas to the south from Kangaroo Creek to Harrogate,” he said.
“Everywhere there are hot spots we don’t want them to break out under the northerly winds on Monday because that’s when the conditions will be far worse.”
Mr Eden said volunteers had received great support from farm firefighting units that had travelled from as far away as Port Augusta.
“People have come from everywhere and that’s just typical of what goes on in Australia at the moment,” he said.
Total fire bans for severe conditions have been issued today for the Mt Lofty Ranges, Kangaroo Island, Mid North, Yorke Peninsula, lower Eyre Peninsula, West Coast and lower southeast.