The heavy rains of last summer have seen grass flourish across inland Australia and that is causing experts to predict a truly ferocious bushfire season.
Forecasters from the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre say the grass, which is growing waist-high in some areas, has now started to dry out, creating ideal fuel for fires.
Just yesterday, we reported on a huge bushfire north of Broome that burned 100,000 hectares of land and forced more than 100 campers to be evacuated.
Richard Thornton from the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre said most of the country will face an above average risk of fire this summer. He said the at-risk-areas encompassed just about everywhere west of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales, almost across the entire continent right across to the Pacific Ocean in the west.
He said grassfires were quick and dangerous.
“They can be very fast moving and they can change direction very quickly with changes in wind speeds,” he said. “This presents a whole load of issues for suppression agencies and particularly for the ability to be able to warn communities and populations who may be out on roads for example.”
In the New South Wales Riverina district, fire evacuation points are being planned for the region’s new red gum national parks. The operations coordinator for the Western Rivers region, John Brickhill, says the National Parks and Wildlife Service has bought new equipment to protect its 100,000 hectares of red gum forests in the region.
New fire trucks and pumps are ready to go in the river red gum parks for when the fire risk intensifies.
“We don’t actually call them safe havens,” he told the ABC “There’s certainly discussion about creating evacuation points but certainly we’ll be developing in our fire strategies for the river parks where we expect lots of people to be camping over the summer time because there’s access to water.”
