The Fire Season is Here

Looks like the fire season in the Helidon Hills has arrived.

I have started up the daily Fire Danger Rating map (in the box to the right) which is clipped from the official state-wide map released daily - see the links to this elsewhere in this blog.

We have had three fires located by the Smokespotter group this month.  Two were controlled burns - we had been notified of the lighting up of these by Private Forestry Services Queensland (a private company contracted to carry out the controlled burns), and they assisted us in confirming that the smoke sightings were in fact their burns. The third was outside of our area of interest, and was around 8km north of the turnoff to the Spring Creek Prison.

The practice of Fire Wardens in our area of adding a note to Fire Permits that the Helidon Hills Smokespotters should be advised at the time of lighting up (when FireComm also needs to be notified) is very much appreciated.

Locating these fires provided a good refresher for the Coordinators (me and KP - see details under the Coordinators above) and a few members of the Smokespotter group.

We are starting the season with a new Smokespotter on a high point in the Iredale area from where he has a good view of a significant part of the Helidon Hills.  I delivered his compass last week, as well as another to one of our group on the edge of the Toowoomba range (he had been using a hiking compass till now).  These compasses were part of a set of ten new Silva bearing compasses given to the Smokespotters by the Lockyer Valley Regional Council.