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General News

14 September, 2023

Emergency services gather in Maryborough to examine past and future fire potential

Emergency services came together last week to run through an emergency scenario and preparation day, examining the conditions of the devastating 1985 Maryborough-Avoca fire and how services can work together ahead of the upcoming fire season. The...

By Christie Harrison

The CFA met up with local agencies including police and SES for an emergency scenario. Photo: supplied
The CFA met up with local agencies including police and SES for an emergency scenario. Photo: supplied

Emergency services came together last week to run through an emergency scenario and preparation day, examining the conditions of the devastating 1985 Maryborough-Avoca fire and how services can work together ahead of the upcoming fire season.

The region’s last major bushfire started near Avoca in January ‘85 and tore through farm and bushland, eventually heading towards Maryborough, Talbot and Daisy Hill.

In total it burned through 50,800 hectares, destroying 101 homes, 500 farms and killing more than 40,000 livestock. One person sadly died.

With a potentially high-risk bushfire season predicted for this summer, local emergency services that are involved in major events including Maryborough Police, Central Goldfields Shire Council, Parks Victoria, SES, CFA and the Red Cross gathered in Maryborough last Wednesday for a face-to-face meeting.

“We used the meeting as an annual ‘get to know you’ afternoon for all the emergency services, and to exercise each agency’s response to a fire scenario and work through a two-hour real time event to give everyone an understanding of the complexities behind each agency, how long it takes to gather certain information, and deploy certain organisational procedures to achieve what’s required for that scenario,” CFA District 2 Acting Assistant Chief Fire Officer Steve Alcock said.

“It was loosely based on the 1985 fire in terms of place of origin, wind direction and temperature. For those that were around back then it gave some real-life reckoning to the scenario, but it wasn’t an exercise in terms of comparing what people did back then to now, because we work in two totally different times and that wouldn’t be a fair comparison.

“Back in ‘85 it was very much a hands-on approach from ground crews, there wouldn’t have been air support, compared to now where we have a pre-determined dispatch plan where an air craft is launched when available with the CFA tankers to hopefully get on scene at the same time, or if we’re lucky just before, to be able to provide some information and drop water.”

Mr Alcock said while emergency service meetings are important, it’s just as important for residents to do their part preparing their properties for summer.

“Overall our ability to be able to handle a fire in the landscape and protect people’s livelihoods and properties comes down to individuals’ preparations,” he said.

“We’re really urging people to start to clean up their properties and remove fuel hazards like leaves and tree limbs. It gives everyone the best possible chance to defend their properties should fire eventuate.”

Goldfields Brigade Group Officer Peter Higgins attended the emergency scenario and said he was impressed with how the day played out.

“The scenario started off with ‘a fire has started in Avoca’, it was classified as a Catastrophic day, the winds were up around that 50-60 km/h, and it was 40° early,” he said.

“As the fire escalated we looked at how we’d run the day, such as at what stage do other emergency services get involved, like setting up police road blocks.

“With present-day we probably would’ve lost a lot more houses, and possibly lives because of population growth from ‘85 to now.

“From our side of it, I was very impressed with how we operated.”

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