Emergency support for Spicketts creek residents
No response has been received from the Local Emergency Management Committee to the following letter, despite follow ups.
Phone 02 6655 9090
Treeferns
1621 Bowraville Road
BELLINGEN
NSW 2454
property address
1426 Bellingen Road
Missabotti
NSW 2447
10 September 2010
I live on the Bellingen/Bowraville Road and I am concerned at the lack of progress in restoring the road to a safe condition. It is 19 months since the road was closed by a major storm.
As you can see from the above my postal address is via Bellingen, but the property address is Missabotti. All services, including emergency services, have in the past come from the Bellingen direction. If I had to call “000”, I would give the postal address because no one would be able to find us using the property address.
I rang Coffs Harbour to check the safety situation, and was advised that as I live in Nambucca Shire, I must contact the relevant Local Emergency Management committee to discuss my concerns.
I am pleased to find that you are the Local Emergency Management Officer for the lower mid north coast, because you understand clearly, the problems faced by those living in the Spicketts creek area.
My wife and I have lived on this property for thirteen years and have experienced bush fires on at least six occasions and of course endured the storms of 2009.
The storm on 31 March 2009, is most clearly etched in my mind. It took two days to get electricity services reinstalled and two months to get the telephone landline repaired (we do not have a mobile phone signal here).
However with the approach of summer, it is fire danger that is of the greatest concern.
Of the six events I can remember, two directly caused the closure of the road to the north. We had bags packed ready to drive south. Both were deliberately lit. One of those was a fire started by Forest NSW which resulted in the destruction of the telephone line connecting us to the telephone exchange. The other was on the side of the road about 500 metres north of Range road.
Another fire was the deliberate torching of an abandoned car to the south of our property. However it could have happened on that northern stretch of forest land. Similarly the lightning strike that caused a fire to the east, could have hit the forest on the northern section of road.
Some of these fires burned for weeks and required helicopter water bombing to control them.
In each case the RFS attended from Brierfield using the Bowraville Road for access.
As you are aware Nambucca Shire Council has declared the road in the northern section too dangerous for council staff to carry out repairs, because of vehicle weight concerns and from the risk of dead trees falling from the land above the road.
As far as I know no one from the RFS has visited this area to see if it could bring in one of their larger vehicles which I understand weigh 16 tons fully loaded with water.
From our point of view it is vital to get the northern section stabilised to allow access by larger fire fighting vehicles and the southern section cleared to at least give us an escape route during this dangerous summer period.
I am not sure in what form a submission to the Lower North Coast Local Emergency Managment Committee should be made. If I need to rephrase the problems facing us please let me know.
However most important is that I get a response to reassure my wife and myself that our safety will be planned for by the LEM committee, in time for this upcoming fire season.
I am enlosing a copy of the map provided by the consultants GHD, to show the damaged areas and the need for the the southern escape route.
Yours sincerely
David Wallin
Lower North Coast Local Emergency Managment Officer
PO Box 551
Macksville 2447
