Bushfires: NSW south coast residents furious at ‘lessons unlearned’

South coast residents are seething at the NSW government and councils for failing to take ­adequate precautions in hazard ­reduction burning.

South coast residents are seething at the NSW government and councils for failing to take ­adequate precautions in hazard ­reduction burning.

Numbugga locals Stephen and Janet Lennon said authorities ­failed to learn the lessons from a bushfire in the forests last August.

“They fly helicopters over there and drop (water) bombs (over state-owned forests) but 90 per cent of the time they don’t even work. And then they cast it as if they have done a burn-off, which doesn’t help,” Mr Lennon said.

“You are not even allowed to cut down trees on your property.”

The chief executive of the local Aboriginal Land Council, Terry Hill, hit out at land management as he surveyed destroyed homes in Cobargo. Mr Hill said two of the properties the Aboriginal body owned to house indigenous people had been impacted by the fires.

“It is because of 230 years of environmental­ neglect,” he said. “What has happened here, ­because of the red tape and everything else, one thing that Australia should have learnt from Aboriginal people is the fire management regime.

“The fuel load has been allowed to build up and build up and build up over a number of years and this is the effect that you get. We live in a country where there was a fire management regime. It was done for a purpose but when the boats arrived, that practice stopped.”

Cobargo resident Di Shipton said fuel loads in the area fed the flames on Tuesday. “If they are going to allow people to reside here, they should be doing their best to protect them,” she said.

Locals say fortifying their homes has been made harder by the drought, which limits water availability and makes their yards drier. Chris Allen, 72, and Jenny Spinks, 68, were installing a sprinkler on Friday on their roof in Bega, which is connected to a rainwater tank that has 25,000 litres of water remaining.

The couple, who have lived in the home for a decade, plan to turn on the sprink­ler if they evacuate on Saturday. Mr Allen said there was enough water to keep it running­ for two hours.

Another Bega resident, Amanda Rolfe, and her neighbours Monique and George Owens were also putting sprinklers on their roofs and hosing their homes. Ms Rolfe said it was the most panicked she had seen people in Bega. “Are we going to see Sunday? These are the questions nobody knows,” she said. “I don’t think I have ever seen panic in the town like this.”