Bushfires in WA 2011
The media have been full of the details and impacts of the February 2011 Roleystone bushfire, in which 71 homes were lost and another 35 damaged. There is no need to repeat any of this material here as the public is very well informed on those events.
This was the worst bushfire in Western Australia, in terms of property losses, since the 1961 Dwellingup fire. Other parts of this website have warned for several years that this sort of disaster could happen. We take no pleasure in being proved right. However, this is not the end of the situation, as there are still large areas of the Perth Hills at great risk from a similar conflagration, as well as several other very dangerous parts of the South West, such as Dunsborough, Margaret River and Denmark.
The Bushfire Front applauds the decision of the Premier to institute a Special Inquiry into the Roleystone disaster and to appoint Mr Mick Keelty to carry it out. We have held back from commenting on this until the Keelty report had been released by the State Government. The report contains 55 recommendations, some with far-reaching implications. We await with interest the Government’s decisions on the recommendations and will comment on those in due course.
This page currently has three parts, set out roughly in chronological order. The first describes an actual bushfire occurrence in the Perth Hills in January 2011 that fortunately came to nothing, the second is the BFF submission to the Special Inquiry, and the third a BFF presentation to a group of rural volunteer firefighters.
- A Modern Bushfire 2011
- BFF Submission to the Keelty Special Inquiry
- The BFF paper presented to a meeting of the rural-based Locals Against Wildfires group