Bushfires: Survivors hope rain will go hell for leather

NSW south coast communities ravaged by the recent bushfires are looking forward to the rain forecast for the next week.

Mogo residents Lorena Granados and her son Dante Roman outside the remains of the family’s leather goods business. Picture: Nikki Short

Dark clouds are gathering over the coastal hamlet of Batehaven on the NSW south coast as leather ­artisans Gaspar Roman and Lorena­ Granados toil at their craft on the steps of their temporary home at the crowded Clyde View Holiday Park.

“It’s our coping mechanism,” said Ms Granados, 41, as she deftly stitches a buckle to a crocodile-skin belt. “We lost everything in the bushfires on New Year’s Eve so we are just working with what we’ve got.”

Like the thousands of bushfire survivors who stretch from the Gold Coast to East Gippsland in Victoria, the couple and their three children — Jessica, 22, Aisha, 20, and Dante, 12 — are facing a new reality. Both the family’s home and their leather goods business were razed on December 31 when the Clyde Mountain bushfire barrelled through the historic tourist town of Mogo, just south of Batemans Bay.

While many of the town’s population of 322 are in the process of rebuilding, all are hoping a week’s worth of forecast rain will finally signal an end to the worst bushfire season on record in NSW.

“We have nothing left, but at least if there’s some meaningful rain we’ll know the nightmare for the town is over,” Ms Granados said. “We are in a much better place now than we were in a month ago.”

The Bureau of Meteorology is expecting a coastal low-pressure trough developing off northern NSW to bring at least a week of solid rainfall from Thursday to parts of NSW and Victoria.

Thunderstorms will hit the nearby town of Batemans Bay and a wide swath of the surrounding area, including parts of the NSW south coast that have been burning for months, with more rain ­expected at the weekend.

The downpour could bring up to 100mm of rain to Batemans Bay and 60mm to the fire-ravaged Bega Valley region on Saturday.

“We will have significant rainfall across large parts of NSW, which will help dampen much of the state and reduce the flammability of the fuel loads in areas that have been under the threat of fire,” the Bureau of Meteorology’s David Wilke said.

“It’s not out of the question that some of these regions, particularly on the south coast, might get relief for the rest of summer.” Mr Wilke said, however, that the reduction of vegetation in burnt areas would change the way the landscape responde­d to heavy rain.

 

Soil damaged by fire and years of relentless drought would be at risk of being washed away, ­poten­t­ially affecting the run-off to dams. “We could possibly see riverine flooding for some parts of NSW and southern Queensland,” the meteorologist said.

As of Wednesday, 62 bush and grass fires were burning throughout NSW, 29 of them uncontained.

About 2700 homes have been destroyed in NSW and Victoria and 33 people have lost their lives in bushfires across Australia since the unprecedented summer season­ began in October.

More than 11,000 fires have ignite­d since July, burning 5.5 million hectares — equivalent to 6.2 per cent of NSW’s landmass — while at the height of the crisis 17 bushfires were burning at an emergency level across large swaths of NSW on November 8.

The sheer scale of the crisis forced Rural Fire Service FS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons to soften his stance on a national inquiry into the bushfires after previously airing doubts over what a royal commission would achieve.

“I’m not sure what the ­parameters are of the inquiry; what you brand it, what you call it, I really couldn’t care less,” Mr Fitzsimmons told ABC radio on Wednesday. “We cannot go through a season like we’ve just gone through and not seek to take stock of what’s happened, and learn from what’s happened.”

On Tuesday, Scott Morrison announced a royal commission into this summer’s bushfire crisis days after NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced an independent inquiry into the state’s bushfire season. Both inquiries are expected to canvass current laws and issues of climate change, drought, fuel loads, hazard reducti­on and human activity.