ONLY two fire brigade units on the southern side of last week’s Gracetown fire, to defend the town should the wind have changed, was one of the local planning and safety problems highlighted by residents at a meeting with South West MLC Barry House on Friday.
The fire, which started suspiciously on Tuesday afternoon in scrub near the beach car park, jumped Bayview Road closing the only access into Gracetown for a period, leaving fire appliances arriving to help fight the fire unable to defend the town.
Resident Wayne Baddock, one of four at a meeting with Mr House on Friday, said this fact was used to emphasise the “urgent need for a second road access” south of Gracetown. He described a second road as a “no brainer”.
Other issues discussed included poor communications due to lack of mobile phone coverage and water availability, Mr Baddock said.
He said the meeting had been organised before the fire, but the problems encountered had highlighted the long-standing issues.
“In the discussions with Barry, he was supportive of the need for a southern access road to Gracetown for a number of reasons.
“Firstly, essential emergency service vehicles would have access to the town for any major incident. This was highlighted during the fire when the only access road was cut off for a period, therefore brigades and other appliances attempting to access the townsite were unable to, potentially putting lives and property at risk.
“Water trucks had to park 2km out of town to safely enable brigades to refill. At one stage only two brigades were on the southern residential side of the fire.”
Mr Baddock said Landcorp’s proposed residential development behind Gracetown would further exacerbate traffic issues, particularly if construction vehicles had to pass through the town. A southern access road would alleviate the traffic issues and could also service the surf breaks in the Lefthanders area.
“No mobile coverage has been a long-running issue for a location that receives huge numbers of visitors. Gracetown has now experienced a number of incidents where no mobile coverage has made the initial and ongoing response extremely difficult,” he said.
“These include the Gracetown (cliff collapse) tragedy, two fatal shark attacks, one boating fatality and three fires immediately surrounding the townsite. The community is fast growing impatient at the responses from Government authorities to these major issues, given these incidents.”
Mr Baddock said Mr House had committed to contacting Vasse MP and Emergency Services Minister Troy Buswell, Landcorp and Augusta-Margaret River Shire Council to further highlight the community concerns.
Fifty Bush Fire Service volunteers from five brigades and Department of Environment and Conservation firefighters were aided by a helitac, two fixed-wing water bombers and an aerial intelligence helicopter in battling last Tuesday’s fire which initially burned about 12ha of scrub on both sides of Bayview Rd adjacent to the northern town boundary.
About 2am Wednesday, a hot spot flared up and the fire then burnt out to north point. Difficult terrain, hot spots and burning underground peat have required the Gracetown fire brigade to continue monitoring the fire ground.
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