Fire risk study to map Straddie bush dwellers

People living ‘off grid’ in makeshift housing in bush at North Stradbroke Island will be surveyed for special fire risk maps.

A fire break behind houses at Amity. Residents say they are concerned that trees are blocking the access; QYAC and Parks officers at a fire on the island: PHOTO: Courtesy of QYAC; and the devastating fires that ripped through Straddie in 2014.

People living off grid in the bush in makeshift housing on North Stradbroke Island will be surveyed and included on a fire risk map.

A team of Queensland Fire and Emergency Service officers plans to start mapping fire breaks on the island and document where and how many people were living in the bush.

The plan was put on hold in March last year when COVID broke out but QFES said it was now “ongoing” after the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation granted it permission to map the secluded areas.

Residents said the mapping was necessary and was a step towards reducing the risk of fatal fires on the island.

They wrote to Fire and Emergency Services Minister Mark Ryan after the October election expressing fears about the lack of maintenance of fire breaks in and around the island’s three townships.

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In an email to Mr Ryan, Amity residents said they felt vulnerable and worried that the fire breaks were overgrown with felled trees strewn across the vehicle access.

This week, residents said a fire break near the cul-de-sac at the end of Kindara St at Amity had not been slashed since November.

They also said their concerns were compounded after nearly 300 hectares of indigenous land was released for development in September.

Confusion over who was responsible for maintaining fire breaks was another worry.

“We pay a fire levy in our rates each year but we still don’t know who is responsible for maintaining our fire breaks or who to complain to when they are overgrown,” residents said.

Houses at Amity are near a fire break which is blocked by fallen trees.

QYAC is contracted to clear some fire trails at the townships of Dunwich, Amity and Point Lookout but QFES and Parks and Wildlife also act.

QFES said landowners, including Redland City Council, the state government and QYAC were responsible for the fire breaks.

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A QFES spokesman from the island, who asked not to be named, said all of the island’s fire breaks were maintained and QFES and Parks and Wildlife staff had been kept busy cleaning up after wild storms since late October.

“It takes a while to go through the maintenance program and get the hundreds of kilometres of fire trails back up to scratch — there are branches and trees coming down all the time,” he said.

“There are trees on the trails but they would not hold us up if there were a fire as all officers are equipped with chainsaws for those instances.”

Some sand tracks work as fire breaks.

Information gathered about how many people were living in the bush would only be used by fireys making operational decisions during bushfires and would not be used in development applications.

In September, the state government and QYAC signed a deal to unlock about 300ha of pristine bushland for indigenous development.

The rezoning, known as a Temporary Local Planning Instrument, will allow traditional owners to apply to Redland City Council to develop the sites for a range of projects including indigenous housing.

Former captain of the Dunwich Fire Brigade Paul Smith said fire risk assessment was important on the island especially as blocks in the TLPI land release had not been appraised.

Fire rips through parts of North Stradbroke Island in 2014. PHOTO: JUDITH KERR

“Assessment for fire risk should have been done before the land release but now QFES is having to look at this land to determine what mitigation measures are necessary,” he said.

“Invoking the TLPI forces the government to do the risk assessment studies, which is different to the usual process where a developer does the study prior to development.”

Straddie was threatened with bushfires in 2014 and again in 2018.

The Queensland Inspector General of Emergency Management said in a review of the 2018 bushfire that QYAC’s involvement was critical in saving cultural and ecological sites.

The fire threat to the island was also the subject of a petition in December asking state parliament to increase the Rural Fire Service’s current 6 per cent share of the QFES Budget.

The petition, signed by 632 people, also asks parliament to increase the number of paid staff in rural and regional areas such as Straddie where the ratio is about one paid staff for every 533 volunteers.

The Rural Fire Brigade of Queensland is responsible for protecting 17 per cent of the state’s population and 93 per cent of its land.