After many decades without fire the Tulka
area near Port Lincoln was dry and had a lot of built up undergrowth. In 2005 a fire broke out sweeping across 145,000 Hectares,
it killed 9 people and injured 113. A total of 93 homes were lost along with 50
other buildings, 100 vehicles and 30,000 livestock. Huge areas were evacuated
and no one will forget the pictures of people standing in the sea to escape the
flames that drove them there as they watched everything they owned destroyed.
Our state was in shock for months and the
result was a heavy upgrade of fire fighting equipment, contingency plans, escape
routes and fire fighting water supplies.
Just a week ago it happened again…
It started close to the previous fire and
followed a similar pattern, burning in inaccessible areas until it built up
then sweeping across the roads to attack the built up areas.
This time though, with more money expended
and our firefighters ready for the fight the statistics are far more
reasonable. (unless you owned one of the houses lost)
Farmers had time to cut their fences to
release stock, homes were abandoned early and firefighters manned (and
womanned) every possible firefighting vehicle… the entire state held our
collective breaths.
This time we lost 9 homes, 11 sheds and
just 850 Hectares of land.
With the reduction in losses we were able
to concentrate on the wildlife like never before.
Kangaroos simply hop over fences and get
away, Wombats dig their burrows deeper and survive in the cool earth but Koalas
cant run or hide and generally die a miserable death.
The last fire destroyed countless Koalas over
a huge area, a rare and special sub species was lost forever. Thankfully there were
areas with far too many Koalas so they were simply moved into the fire damaged
areas as regrowth appeared to support them.
This fire killed many of the imported
animals and so with the state already prepared for an onslaught of injured
humans they swung into action to save as many of the injured animals as they
could.
*This little Kangaroo has burned feet and lost his mother in the fire, he's being cared for in the home of a wildlife warrior and will be released when possible.
*Heroes...
.
