Page 3 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 11 February 2020
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Through a combination of good fortune and the tireless work of our emergency service agencies responding to the bushfire risk, Canberra suburbs were spared evacuation. Just over two days ago, the state of alert was lifted in the territory for the first time since 2 January, but we do remind everyone that the bushfire season is not over yet.
The Beard fire, which threatened residents in Oaks Estate, burnt through hundreds of hectares. The Orroral Valley fire has now burnt through over 86,000 hectares of the territory, and over 80 per cent of Namadgi National Park. It is one of the biggest ecological disasters in our territory’s history.
As a community, we have had a disrupted and difficult time over this summer, having to keep children inside and away from playgrounds and parks, with thousands and thousands of families having to cancel much-anticipated holidays, and facing the trauma every night on our televisions. Residents in Oaks Estate, Tharwa and the Lanyon Valley in particular, but in all of Canberra’s southern suburbs, have seen the light of the fires burning, often only hundreds of metres from their homes. They have experienced sleepless nights and feared for their homes.
But from this difficult time there are many stories of Canberrans who stood up when our city and our surrounding region needed them most. We are very fortunate to have an outstanding team of teams at the Emergency Services Agency. This includes the ACT Rural Fire Service, ACT Fire & Rescue, ACT State Emergency Services, ACT Ambulance Service, and the ESA and ACT Policing teams supporting their work.
They worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week, monitoring and responding to the fires, and responding to a record number of calls from Canberra households damaged by the hailstorm. They also continued their daily duties, responding to incidents across the territory. We cannot thank them enough for this effort to keep our city and our territory safe. These men and women, both paid and volunteers, make daily sacrifices as part of their work; they do it with good grace, and, I can attest, with good humour.
Commissioner Whelan and her leadership team deserve all of the praise that they have been getting. The commissioner, chief officers Joe Murphy and Mark Brown, Jeffrey Butler at the SES, and dozens of other hardworking staff out at Fairbairn provided fantastic leadership through this period and through the year. On a personal level, I appreciated the commissioner’s frank advice and her commitment to keeping our community well informed on the risks we faced from a number of challenging weather conditions.
I want to also acknowledge the vital work that ACT police performed in supporting our firefighters to do their job, as did the Australian Defence Force personnel that were sent to support the territory. From managing road closures to doorknocking at-risk suburbs and building containment lines, their work was critical in our response to the two bushfires, the two significant fires, that burnt in the territory.
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