The Blue Lake Golf Course was saved during the Crater Lakes fire last Tuesday thanks to CFS and MFS fire crews who worked hard to backburn around the area.
Deputy Group Officer Jon Lamond was the CFS Incident Controller. He said initially they put a backburn in from the cemetery to the Centenary Tower car park and held it on a line there.
“It was always going to be a risk that we were going to get some spot-overs into the next compartment,” he said.
“Then the biggest issue there was the drone coming in through the area and grounded all our air crew.”
Mr Lamond said with the air crew grounded, they could no longer observe the situation from above.
Due to the density of the area, the pilots could see spot fires early and bomb them quickly, but the drone prevented this from occurring.
“When that happened, we then had to re-evaluate what our next move was,” he said.
“So we thought our best move was in the late afternoon to evening, we were going to get a wind change.”
Mr Lamond said when the southerly wind change arrived crews had pre-organised the dozer.
The firefighters started down at the cemetery and worked their way back, allowing the fire to burn back through to ensure the safety of the golf course area.
Mr Lamond said the wind change allowed firefighters to create a fire break back to what had already been burnt up towards Centenary Tower.
“Because we had that southerly wind change, we knew that we were going to get a northerly the next day,” he said.
“So we took advantage of that, removed the fuel loads, so that once it went back to the north we knew that our assets were safe.”
Mr Lamond said they tried to pull it up as close to the golf course as possible to prevent evacuating the whole caravan park.
“If it had of kept going then it would have burnt right through to the caravan park,” he said.
Mr Lamond hoped the dozer break from the centenary car park would be maintained and would continue as a permanent fire break for years to come.
The firefighters battled the blaze in undulating terrain with limited accessibility.
Mr Lamond said the water bombers completed around 340 drops, close to approximately 550,000 to 600,000 litres of water.
Mr Lamond said it was a combined effort by the CFS, MFS and other emergency services in challenging conditions to achieve a great outcome with no assets or personnel lost.
“We worked together really well, MFS and CFS work unbelievably well together,” he said.
Mr Lamond said the CFS and MFS will meet with Mount Gambier City Council and other emergency services to devise better fire breaks for coming years and discuss controlled burns, which will reduce the fuel load and improve access for emergency service vehicles.
