Extra crews fight blaze

Personnel statewide join bushfire battle

A BUSHFIRE that has been burning on the Atherton Tableland for more than two weeks has already ripped through about 11,000ha of land, Rural Fire Services Superintendent Wayne Waltisbuhl says.

He said the blaze was one of the largest in the region to date, with 50 new firefighters and emergency service personnel from across the state being deployed to the Irvinebank area at the weekend. ORGANISERS of Corks 2 Forks have been “overwhelmed” by the community response to the food festival.

Co-organiser Renae Walsh said nearly 2000 people

“For this sort of place it’s a large fire, but it gets into areas that are inaccessible,” Supt Waltisbuhl said.

“There aren’t many roads and one of the things that hinder us is putting in new containment lines with dozers because it’s an area of unexploded ordinances in there.

“We’re very much aware of that and that’s been a part of our safety briefing.”

Supt Waltisbuhl said the incident management team walked through the gates at Edmonton’s Petersen Park yesterday.

“We had an enormous response, we were quite overwhelmed,” Ms Walsh said.

The family-friendly festival also featured a raffle to benefit had undergone a major changeover on Saturday, with a new team now on the ground until late this week.

“We’ve had a whole heap of new crews come up last night from South East Queensland that are supporting us. Plus there’s a heap of locals still,” he said.

“There’s now also 12 new people on the incident management team and the others are eagerly waiting to get on a bus to Cairns to get on a farmers through the Buy A Bale charity. “We raised just under $2000 for Buy A Bale,” Ms Walsh said.

She and fellow organiser Bec Dent now have their eyes set on the north side for the November Corks 2 Forks. plane to go home and have a rest and reset.

“This is probably one of the first instances where we’ve had the whole state really on high alert.”

While the initial cause of the bushfires was still unknown, he said there was some suspicious activity that crews had been investigating.

“I don’t believe that’s how it started at this stage,” he said.

Supt Waltisbuhl said the communities and structures

“We have noticed a big food movement in Cairns over the last 12 to 18 months,” Ms Walsh said.

She said the plethora of rides and a movie distracted kids while mums and dads could take a break and enjoy the food. that had been under threat were now excluded from the fire area and were safe.

“Our action at the moment is watch and just keep burning along the road edge just to contain the fire,” he said.

“There’s no plans at this stage to do any big backburning operations.”

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Of course that didn’t stop parents from getting in on the fun – most rides had parents jumping on with the kids.

“The food vans all had queues and most of them ran out of food by the end of the night,” Ms Walsh said.