Residents fear Couran Cove Resort on brink of fire disaster
A once thriving Stradbroke community is just one spark from a devastating fire, with no working fire hydrants and no running water within an almost 1km radius.
QLD News
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Residents at Couran Cove Resort on South Stradbroke Island believe their community is on the brink of disaster after a family pet was killed in a house fire last month.
Couran Cove Resort residents have spent 18 months without access to water, power and gas after a bitter body corporate dispute left the area without working fire hydrants.
Couran Cove Resort has a self-managed body corporate split into four subsidiary body corporates: Eco Lodges, Broadwater Villas, Lagoon Lodges and Marine Apartments.
The house that burnt down was in the last sector, which is considered the least vulnerable to fire.
The Community Body Corporate is in charge of managing utilities through a service provider, but the dispute with the subsidiary groups has left it without funds to do the job.
Witnesses to the fire said the lack of available hydrants caused significant delays for rural firefighters, forcing them to feed hoses through the fence of a neighbouring property to access water.
“There was already smoke and within seconds it went into black smoke. I couldn’t even see my feet. The smoke was that bad that some people tried to put masks on,” said one resident Bob (not his real name), who spoke on the grounds of anonymity.
“If they could hook into a fire hydrant on that side of the road, we would have been fine.
“The fire truck was running off a generator. If they had the pressure of a proper water system through the hydrants, more of the building could have been saved.”
He said dozens of locals could only watch as the family dog perished.
Another resident “Jane” described the house fire as a wake-up call. “We have a fire truck, but we don’t have the hydrants,” she said.
“Why cut the hydrants off? That dog was their baby, it was a beautiful dog. We choose to live here, and this could be very bad. This was just a little preview of what it could be.
“Houses 100 metres away from us have power, hydrants working, safety. If it wasn’t for them lending us their hoses, it could have been a lot worse.”
A Queensland Fire Department spokesman said the cause of the fire was under investigation.
A resident described conditions as similar to those in the Hunger Games series.
“We live off solar generators, some people have pumps, some people have rainwater … the UN says all human beings have the right to water,” she said.
“I take my own rubbish down to the tip, I supply my own water, we don’t even get our sewage collected, and we have to move our own faecal matter around because we don’t have flushing water.
“It feels like a loss of human life needs to happen for us to be heard. We’ve got a storm season coming. We don’t have maintenance, but we’re doing as best as we can in this community.”
She said residents have to pay for a private water ferry to access the mainland.
“It costs me $200 to go shopping. That’s now much a water taxi costs,” she said.
“Council provides a ferry at Tippers Campground, but you probably have to walk a good hour in bushland with deadly snakes. You just can’t do it. We only want a ferry once a week to go to doctors … basic services. We’ve just been cut off completely.”
Homes situated among dense forestry fall under Eco Lodges.
Matthew Asia went on a three-week hunger strike earlier this year in hopes to regain access to water on the island.
“Cutting off the water completely is breaking international human rights laws,” he said.
“Currently, people are only getting small bottles of water, a few litres per day, it’s nowhere near enough to live with any sort of dignity.”
Access to water is recognised by the United Nations as a human right, with the World Health Organisation stating that between at least 50 and 100 litres of water per person, per day, must be available within 1000 metres of a home.
He said that if one of the homes within the Eco Lodges precinct caught fire, there would be no way to put it out.
“The trees are all super dry, it’s pretty much kindling. If another fire starts anywhere else, it’s potentially all gone. There’s nothing to stop it.”
“If the house fire last month had started anywhere else, there wouldn’t be the infrastructure to stop it. There’s the water from the fire truck and some containers of water by the side of the road, that’s pretty much it.”
A fellow resident agreed that all homes in the resort were at risk of catastrophic damage if just one Eco Lodges home caught fire.
“If this [the house fire] happened in Eco, we would have lost everything,”
“There are no working fire hydrants.
“It’s so internal … you can’t run to a beach, if you did, you would have to run through a bushfire. If you go the other way, you have to go to a desolate beach.”
In a statement given to The Courier-Mail, a Gold Coast City Council spokeswoman said the council had no authority to maintain services at Couran Cove.
“As Couran Cove Resort is a wholly self-sufficient development where the body corporate is responsible for the community property, the City has no authority to implement or maintain services or associated infrastructure at Couran Cove Resort,” the statement read.
“The water and sewerage infrastructure at the resort is privately owned and is not connected to City infrastructure. Fire hydrants in the resort are the responsibility of the body corporate/receiver.
The State Government is responsible for managing bushfire risk in the conservation park, which covers 84 per cent of the island. In the vicinity of Couran Cove Resort, the body corporate is responsible for their land.”
Couran Cove Island Resort infrastructure operator Simon Napoli said the majority of services to the resort were cut off in April last year due to unpaid bills.
“These bills remain outstanding and were the subject of a recent Supreme Court hearing, where judgments were received, and a court-appointed receiver was appointed by the judge to collect over $25 million in unpaid invoices owing to the companies by the SBC,” he said.
Mr Napoli is now calling for the subsidiary body corporates to pay the overarching Community Body Corporate to fund essential services.
“While the SBC continue to ignore their obligations, the fire hydrants cannot be turned on as the CBC does not have the funds to pay for those services. It costs money to run a community and while the CBC is starved of those funds, the system will continue to fail,” he said.
“When a proper functioning body corporate system is restored and the committee members of the SBC meet all of their legal obligations to pass on the correct amount of the levies raised to pay the community body corporate, the CBC will have the funds to pay to turn back on the essential services.”
But in documents sighted by The Courier-Mail, Jane, along with other residents, continue to pay thousands of dollars every quarter to the SBC, on top of Gold Coast City Council rates.
Last week Wasp Creek Rural Fire Brigade sent a letter to residents asking them to clear green waste around their property.
“If the green waste is left on the ground or dumped in the bush it increases the fuel loading and adds to the fire risk to your homes. It’s essential to clear your gutters and clear your property regularly. While we hope it’s never required everyone should have an evacuation plan in place for yourself and your families,” the letter read.
Despite fire mitigation efforts from residents, Jane is still terrified of bushfire season.
“Human lives are going to be lost. We’re not asking for much, just put our water back on through our hydrants,” Jane said.
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