WA fires: Authorities warned about Yarloop's lack of water in 2015

Date
    January 8, 2016
    WA Today.

Yarloop residents are angry authorities ignored their fears about a lack of water pressure in the town last year after a resident told media there was no water for firefighters to use to try and fight the blaze which destroyed the town on Friday.


At least 95 houses have been destroyed by fire in Yarloop.

Yarloop Bowling Club president Ron Sackville said he wrote to Water Minister Mia Davies last year concerned a number of fire hydrants weren't working in the town, 120 kilometres south of Perth.

He said a couple of them were fixed, but when firefighters tried to get water from the hydrants to fight the fire, a number of them were on the fritz.   

"Something has failed, because some of them didn't work," he said.


A bushfire has completed devastated the South West town of Yarloop.

"And there was no water in the town by five o'clock. It had completely disappeared. I'm really, really angry."

Three residents are still unaccounted for in the South West town and 95 homes and a number of historic buildings including the Yarloop Workshops have been destroyed in the massive blaze that was still raging on Friday morning.

Mr Sackville said he could only count nine buildings still standing in Yarloop.


Yarloop residents are angry after firefighters were unable to draw water from some hydrants in the town.

"It's just terrible," he said.

"I couldn't get all the way down there but understand the steam museum is gone ... the post office survived, the pub is gone, the bowling club survived.

"Fortunately I have a firefighting pump and house and managed to save our house and the horses that were in the paddock - they are in the backyard now.


Close to 100 homes have been destroyed in Yarloop as out-of-control bushfires continue to threaten towns in the South West.



"But I look around 360 degrees and everything is burnt to a cinder. I think the post office is the only building left standing [in the main street]. The fire was horrendous."

The volunteer firefighter told Radio 6PR on Friday morning the Water Minister should resign over the "water situation in Yarloop".   

"There was no water here to fight the fire, the trucks couldn't fill up," he said. "It's just the devastation of a whole town.

"The fire was horrendous. There has been a real lack of land maintenance around Yarloop by some of the private owners - once the fire got into that at the northern end of town, there was no stopping it."

Fire and Emergency Services commissioner Wayne Gregson told gathered media on Friday he had heard Yarloop residents were angry there was a serious lack of water in the town to battle the blaze.

"We will look at that," he said.

"The resupply of trucks from both the fuel and water perspective is usually done independently of town water supply but I did hear his comments in respect to town water supply.

"As I said at the beginning do not rely on scheme water...do not rely on power as been guaranteed. They are likely to fail when you have such a situation. It generally does not impact upon fire response operations because our logistics mean we are independently supplied.

"But I did hear those concerns."

Water Corporation acting CEO Mark Leathersich said he understood it was a stressful time for the Yarloop community and communities affected.

this is tragic.... of course we are never prepared for anything like this are we??>..

its a shame we are not allowed to build dams these days without going through years of reporting and fact finding... all that rain goes to waste time and time again....then bang 95 homes get wiped out....and suddenly they discover not enough water to fight the fire.......well well well.....yes well.... thats the state of the whole country...when the drought hits.. you will hear the same cry... we havent got enough water...

miketrees wrote on Jan 9^th, 2016 at 8:19am:


Or perhaps people shouldn't build in areas where high fire risk exists, especially those areas in which it would be very difficult to combat a fire.

Oh,, come on SOW there were trees planted between the road and the refineries.

It was all good and green.

Please forgive my naivety, I remember when they planted all those paddocks to hide the factory/smelter whatever.

I thought, surely that is not going to fool anyone.

Well it fooled enough.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Jan 9^th, 2016 at 9:01am:


so you think everyone should live either in the dessert or in the cities ...

wait, scrap cities, skyscrapers are fire traps ... maybe we should all live on the beaches in sandcastles?

miketrees wrote on Jan 9^th, 2016 at 10:36am:


that I agree with ... I just don't agree with the 'shouldn't live in the bush'  bullsh1t ... Todays one horse towns in the bush are next centuries megacities.

There was a house that survived in one of the Victorian bushfires.

The place had a sprinkler system set up, tanks, gutters that returned the water to the tank.

Even without elaborate sprinkler systems there are things you can do.

Metal fly screens, shutters ,sealed eaves, clean gutters, or no gutters.
If you have the native vegetation a decent distance from your house ,,, most of the job is controlling any falling embers.
So if you lived in the bush as long as you had a fire bunker to retreat to ,, you could stay and fight a fire.
Dont have wanky evaporative airconditioners.

Quote:

If you check out some photos of the Canberra fires, you'll see that mostly, there were homes that were left unburnt, surrounded by those who were destroyed.

When you live in a city, it's easy to assume you're immune from things like bushfire. Canberra got a big wake up call.