Media response - fire danger season preparation
Published on 24 August 2023
Response to the Victor Harbor Times.
- The journalist asked how the City of Onkaparinga was preparing for fire danger season in terms of vegetation.
Comments attributed to Kirk Richardson, Director City Operations
Our roles and responsibilities around bushfire preparedness include providing advice to residents through our community development programs, slashing dry grass on reserves and rural roadsides, pruning of trees on rural roadsides to ensure safe access, and removal of weeds that are highly flammable.
Our team maintains more than 1900 hectares of open space and council road verges on a rotational basis throughout the year, with spring typically being the busiest time of year for grass-cutting.
Our regular bushfire preparedness efforts have been bolstered recently with our Bushfire Preparedness and Resilience Project, which commenced last year thanks to a $3.57 million federal government grant from the National Emergency Management Agency.
This project brings together multiple stakeholders including the CFS, state government departments and bushfire specialists, and aims to identify problem areas and find solutions before disaster strikes.
In addition to resident education and support for community-led disaster resilience groups, the three-year project has us rolling out fuel reduction in stages—starting with areas of greatest risk—as determined by the state government's Bushfire Management Plan.
We’re targeting significant fuel reduction works on rural roadsides, high bushfire-prone zones close to urban areas and select reserves over the next two years. This will result in a marked reduction in woody weeds, with the flammable olive tree being a key target species (a declared pest plant). We’re also targeting sites in proximity to stringybark forest.
Olives and other woody weeds are controlled and fell/removed or chipped by contractors and in-house. Our recent purchase of a Green Climber high-tech remote-controlled mower (nicknamed Robochop) allows us to quickly and safely maintain slopes and other areas that were previously inaccessible or unsafe for human-operated slashers, while also making light work of thick brush, saplings, noxious weeds and other bushfire fuel. The City of Onkaparinga was the first council in Australia to purchase a machine of this kind.
ENDS