Fighting fire with fire: How burns helped firies battle Wilmington blaze

Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice South Aus­tralia spends a lot of time work­ing on strate­gic pri­or­i­ties – the where, how and why – to help reduce the risk of bush­fires in South Aus­tralia, and man­age the envi­ron­ment on reserves and Crown land across the state. 

Here we’re tak­ing a clos­er look at how the Wilm­ing­ton fire played out – and how the strate­gic pre­scribed burns pro­gram played a crit­i­cal role in get­ting the blaze under control. 

How old burns help fight new fires

It was hot and windy on Mon­day Feb­ru­ary 3. Local NPWS staff in the Yorke and Mid North region were on high alert with dry light­ning strikes fore­cast. Staff were on call for the evening, and short­ly after a fire broke out in the north­west sec­tion of Mount Remark­able Nation­al Park.

Two NPWS quick response vehi­cles were sent, fol­lowed by two tankers from the local Wilm­ing­ton CFS brigade and CFS air sup­port. But the fire quick­ly grew more intense in rocky, steep ter­rain with lim­it­ed tracks. Aer­i­al bomb­ing and a hose­lay were used to try and con­tain the fire but intense fire behav­iour made this unachiev­able and an ear­ly evening wind change led to the fire spread­ing in all direc­tions and jump­ing tracks. 

A bush­fire in this large, drought-affect­ed nation­al park dur­ing Feb­ru­ary, with more hot weath­er on the way, was a worst-case sce­nario and CFS was quick to declare the bush­fire a major inci­dent. This meant an Inci­dent Man­age­ment Team (IMT) was deployed to Port Augus­ta the fol­low­ing morn­ing, made up of spe­cial­ist staff and vol­un­teers from cross the state.

The fire increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly overnight in all direc­tions due to hot con­di­tions and dry fuels. The rocky, steep ter­rain and lim­it­ed tracks meant that a com­bi­na­tion of con­trol strate­gies had to be imple­ment­ed to con­tain the fire to the north of the reserve. 

The IMT col­lect­ed and eval­u­at­ed infor­ma­tion quick­ly and put to good use a net­work of pre­scribed burns put in the park by NPWS staff. A com­bi­na­tion of con­trol strate­gies was used to con­tain the fire to the north of the reserve with these low­er fuel load sites giv­ing fire­fight­ers options, includ­ing time and space to put in back­burns, that helped stop the bush­fire spreading. 

The suc­cess of those back burns was due to the most recent pre­scribed burns (2021, 2022 and 2023) which helped get the bush­fire under con­trol and pre­vent­ed the whole park from burn­ing and threat­en­ing local com­mu­ni­ties. This was the orig­i­nal objec­tive of the burns.

Expert plan­ning pays off

Fire man­age­ment plans are pro­duced with the help of a fire sci­ence team, park rangers, ecol­o­gists and lots of exper­tise from local staff. There’s also input from bush­fire man­age­ment com­mit­tees, Coun­try Fire Ser­vice (CFS), First Nations, local coun­cils, Land­scapes SA and envi­ron­men­tal peak bodies.

These his­tor­i­cal burns were part of a long-term strat­e­gy to help stop bush­fires burn­ing the entire park in a sin­gle event and were crit­i­cal in allow­ing fire crews to stop the fire spread­ing. Plan­ning puts these burns, fire tracks, fire breaks and oth­er pre­ven­tion mea­sures into our beloved parks. 

A pre­scribed burn planned for this autumn also meant staff were very famil­iar with the area. This made it easy to put a plan in place quick­ly, as they had already iden­ti­fied low fuel ridges to the south­west to use as con­trol lines, in com­bi­na­tion with retardant. 

It starts and ends with a great team effort

The fire was declared con­tained after 13 long days and safe after 36 days, with less than a third of the park affect­ed. This was thanks to the mam­moth efforts of hun­dreds of fire­fight­ers and sup­port crews from CFS, pri­vate landown­ers with Farm Fire Units, air oper­a­tions and NPWS crews who per­se­vered in steep, rocky ter­rain even when tem­per­a­tures reached the mid-40s. Oth­er sup­port agen­cies and ser­vices were also invalu­able in look­ing after the fire­fight­ers while they worked on putting it out. 

Speak­ing on ABC Coun­try Hour on Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 14, the day the bush­fire was declared con­tained, CFS Chief Offi­cer Brett Lough­lin praised fire­fight­ers for their ded­i­ca­tion on the Wilm­ing­ton fireground.

“I’m incred­i­bly proud of every­one achiev­ing that result in these hor­ren­dous con­di­tions and heat. As a state we should be proud. That’s super­hero stuff to keep a fire of that size in a box in those kinds of conditions.”

Get­ting the fire under con­trol didn’t just help save the park.

Thanks to the work of the Nat­ur­al Val­ues Team in the IMT (trained ecol­o­gists who focus on min­imis­ing neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal impacts where they can, as work is being done to sup­press the fire) mea­sures were tak­en to avoid affect­ing sig­nif­i­cant species and ecosys­tems where pos­si­ble, while still min­imis­ing the fire’s impact.

It looks like the yel­low-foot­ed rock wal­la­bies’ habi­tat is large­ly intact, threat­ened orchids’ dor­mant tubers are pro­tect­ed, and con­trol lines put in place means suit­able unburnt habi­tat was left in the park for oth­er species to enjoy.

Mount Remark­able after the fire: what’s open and what to expect
Vis­i­tors are wel­come to explore Mount Remark­able Nation­al Park, which remains large­ly open.

The Alli­ga­tor Gorge area is tem­porar­i­ly closed because the fire dam­aged facil­i­ties and trails, but restora­tion efforts are already under­way. Mean­while, Mam­bray Creek, Mel­rose and Wil­lowie remain ful­ly acces­si­ble for camp­ing, pic­nick­ing and hik­ing on trails like Hid­den Gorge Hike, Mon­i­tor Loop and the South­ern Flinders Rail Trail.

All des­ig­nat­ed moun­tain bik­ing trails are open (cycling isn’t per­mit­ted on oth­er tracks), and vis­i­tors are encour­aged to plan care­ful­ly, book ear­ly, and check parks​.sa​.gov​.au for updates in case con­di­tions change. By observ­ing clo­sures, stick­ing to des­ig­nat­ed trails, tak­ing rub­bish home and respect­ing ongo­ing eco­log­i­cal recov­ery, vis­i­tors can help this remark­able land­scape heal and thrive.

Head­er image: Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice Fire Crews work­ing from an aer­i­al retar­dant line.