By STEVE GRAY
“IF A FIRE started up here, you’d just get in your car and go. And you’d better make it your fastest car.”
That’s the way John Latemore sums up the fears of Rosenthal Heights residents, concerned that a fire in the tinder-dry, overgrown bush just across the fence could cost them their homes. Or worse, their lives.
The residents live adjacent to the seven-hectare Everest Road Flora and Fauna Reserve on the outskirts of Warwick, now deep in dry grass.
There’s only one road in and out, meaning evacuation would be impossible if it was cut by fire.
It’s state land, controlled by the Southern Downs Regional Council and managed by the Society for Growing Australian Plants as a nature reserve.
SDRC deputy mayor Ross Bartley said a recent assessment by firefighters indicated that a controlled burn-off was now impossible, and there’s so much fuel that if a fire did rip through the block there would be no nature left to preserve.
“With such a hot, intense fire there would be very little native vegetation left to preserve,” Cr Bartley said.
The land was threatened by a grassfire just a fortnight ago and the QFRS assessment is that it would be impossible to defend the land in the event of a bushfire, Cr Bartley said.
The council has maintained a statutory 30-metre firebreak between the residents and the native scrub. But it admits that overarching branches would render the slashed area useless in the event of a canopy fire similar to the one which devastated areas south of Stanthorpe a decade ago, claiming a life.
The council has decided to review the management strategy to reduce the danger to residents, and may again permit limited grazing to keep the groundcover down.
The land was grazed for decades, up until early this year when a local farmer received a solicitor’s letter from the Society for Growing Australian Plants, ordering the removal of stock.
Residents and some councillors agree that the re-introduction of light grazing would remove the worst of the fire danger and they argue that stock had left the remnant vegetation intact then and will do so again.
Those living in the upmarket suburb value the nature reserve, but fear its potential to wreak destruction.
“I’m very happy that this is here, but they should revisit their management strategy,” Ron Simon said.
Firefighters doorknocked the area over the weekend and confirmed there was a high fire risk, residents said.
The land’s managers, the Society for Growing Australian Plants, in Warwick and Brisbane, were unavailable for comment.
