Wheatbelt fire: Fire authorities investigating farm burn-offs as cause of blaze

Fire authorities are investigating farm burn-offs in the Wheatbelt that are believed to have sparked a weekend inferno which destroyed property and killed livestock. The blaze, one of those which wiped out a total of 50,000 hectares of farmland, was ignited on Sunday by smouldering canola windrows agitated by strong winds, according to Bruce Rock shire president Stephen Strange. He said two farmers were issued with shire permits and started burning off last Wednesday. Due to predicted catastrophic fire conditions across the weekend the Shire revoked the permits by Friday morning. But one burn-off wasn’t completely extinguished, Mr Strange said. “It was a case of one farmer on one side of the road that everything, his smouldering windrows, were out,” he said. “But on the other side, there obviously was some smouldering windrows. With those strong winds, (it) just turned or just rolled the ash into the fire break and away it went.” Investigators from the Department of Fire and Emergency Services took possession of the permits on Tuesday. It came as Commissioner Darren Klemm and Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson travelled to Bruce Rock to meet with Shire representatives and impacted farmers. An unconfirmed number of houses were lost in the Wheatbelt, along with sheds, machinery, and livestock. Thousands of sheep were killed or have since been euthanased. The farmer who conducted the burn-off is in shock and has been transferred to a Perth hospital. Mr Strange, who flew over the impacted area and said he saw the ignition point, was reluctant to apportion blame to the landholders. “They didn’t break any of the conditions of the permits and nor did his neighbour,” Mr Strange said. The shire’s prohibited burning season ended on January 31, with restricted burning allowed from February 1. Just south in the Shire of Lake Grace, however, local government officials pushed burn-offs back because of the dry season -- a common occurrence in summers with high fuel loads. “There are some farmers with some pretty big programs… they like to start on their windrows to get them done and out of the way. They believe that saves an open fire in a paddock. But of course, this is what’s happened,” Mr Strange said. Bruce Rock Shire fire control officers had been “satisfied”, he said, that permits could be issued if conditions were abided by. Corrigin Shire president Des Hickey has warned the clean up in his Wheatbelt farming region will take months with a district-wide power outage a continuing problem. The fire forced residents in Corrigin, Kondinin and Kulin to take shelter in their homes or evacuate on Sunday. Houses, sheds, machinery, paddocks and livestock were lost. Mr Hickey said 80 per cent of his land was burnt. With crop stubble burnt and strong winds fanning paddocks across the past two days, decades of top soil was also gone. “The dust it’s going to blow for the next three months, potentially. It could be anything up to June before we get rained on. So, it’ll be three to four months of pretty horrendous dry condition,” Mr Hickey said. “But we can’t do anything about that. You can only work around those situations but in terms of the soil health issues, we just got to repair what we can when we can.” The fire was one of three separate catastrophic bushfires over the weekend, with the Bridgetown and Denmark also under attack. Premier Mark McGowan visited Bridgetown on Tuesday and praised the work of firefighters. “It has been a magnificent joint effort to deal with what was a very, very dramatic situation,” he said. A DFES spokesman said an investigation is under way into the cause of all the fires.

Wheatbelt fire: Fire authorities investigating farm burn-offs as cause of blaze

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