Farmers encouraged to be aware of fire danger
Lack of water major concern
WHEN every blade of grass is precious, a bushfire is the last thing farmers need to worry about.
The Rural Fire Service has already attended 76 bushfires in southwest Queensland since June 30.
“It is a larger number than what we had this time last year. And what we’re seeing is the fires are becoming more prolonged earlier in the year,” John Welke, acting area director for the Rural Fire Service on the Darling Downs said.
“Already we’re seeing fires taking up to two weeks to contain. Where as those sort of conditions are not something we usually see until the heat of summer is upon.
“Because of the dry weather a lot of the timber and forest areas are becoming fully involved in fire. Which during greener or better times might not have caught fire or burned as long.
“But every bit of timber is so dry and drought stressed now that even green, living trees are catching fire.”
Chris Wren is a farmer at Wren Valley Produce and Turf as well as an officer with the Severnlea East/Mt Tully rural fire brigade.
Mr Wren has been part of the rural fire brigade since 1992.
There have been two fires in Severnlea, near Stanthorpe, in the past two weeks and one close by in Ballandean.
“I haven’t seen conditions quite as bad as this to the early 2000s – the absolute dryness of the country,” Mr Wren said.
“It’s an extremely stressful time with the drought. It is of concern, but as farmers we need to be resilient to deal with the elements.
“I think most people are getting as prepared as they possibly can be.”
Mr Welke said these fires are just adding more stress to local farmers.
“At the moment every blade of grass is valuable to producers, so these sort of fires are really having an impact. Especially with no good rain in sight,” he said.
“Whilst the vast majority of our farmers are well prepared for bushfire season, it’s just the extra pressure to have available firefighting water on hand at the moment.
“Most of the creeks and bores we usually draw water from are dry.”
Mr Wren said the lack of water across the region is a major concern.
“At the recent event at Ballandean, the tanker operator told me he went through 90,000 litres of water. And that means he was pumping water from a private dam,” he said.
“We don’t want to be taking precious water out of people’s tanks, but if we need to we need to. It’s certainly in our minds that water is so precious.
“But there are a lot of empty dams, so that water might not even be there.”
Mr Wren said he has not been surprised by the bad start to the bushfire season.
“Having been on the land all my life, it’s kind of been what we’ve been expecting. It hasn’t snuck up on us, it’s been very dry for a long time,” he said.
“The potential was always going to be there depending on what winter we got, which was next to none.
“Without any good spring rain it has the potential to be a bad fire season.
“The district is hoping and praying for some sort of spring rain, not just from a fire point of view but from a farming point of view too.”
Mr Welke said the most affected areas at the moment range from the eastern areas of the Toowoomba Regional Council, down to Inglewood, Stanthorpe, right to the New South Wales border and beyond.
“We’ve had a wide variety of causes of these fires,” he said.
“Some are being treated as suspicious however we’ve had simple things which have been turning into quite significant events.
“Whether is be escaped campfires, or hot coals that have been discarded from fire places.”