Volunteer, Peter Humphriss, is a founding member of Remote Area Fire Team (RAFT) for the Castlereagh Zone, and Fire Captain of Dandry Brigade. Peter could not attend the rally Back the Gomeroi against Santos: Rally and Roadtrip on 12 August as he was running a remote area fire training weekend for new recruits in Wollongong.
Peter calls the Pilliga home. He lives there with his three children, his partner and his good friend Matty who read out the following speech written by Peter at the event.
“The Pilliga Forest is known as Big Fire Country. This forest is approximately 500,000 hectares in size and the fires that have happened here are incredible, with fires burning areas as large as 350,00 hectares. Most fires are started out here by lightning.
The largest fire spread recorded here was 100,000 hectares on the first day. Section 44 is the highest classification for a bushfire in Australia and the Pilliga is nick-named Section 44 Capital, with 1997 fire burning 143,500ha, 2006 burning 74,000 in one day, the 2012 fire burning 220ha in the first two hours, the 2018 fire burnt over 170,000ha. This is just a small idea of how crazy the fires are in this forest and now Santos and the government want to put a gasfield here. Santos’ fire plan is to evacuate, remote shut down and leave it to the volunteers to fight a bushfire in a gasfield.
The temperatures of a bush fire can reach over 1200 degrees and with the rate of spread of Pilliga fires being 220ha in two hours. If the remote shut down infrastructure were to be damaged this would be catastrophic for our volunteers. The danger Santos infrastructure poses to us is just unacceptable. We are not paid. We are not trained to deal with a gasfield bushfire.
I am working with captains around the Pilliga and we will refuse to send crews into the gasfield as it is up to us to deem it safe to send our crews in. I took this to the Santos AGM and they said just let it burn. If we do not stop this [gas project] the dangers to the communities around The Pilliga and our volunteers is insane.”
Facts of the Pilliga:
Fires
- 1950-1999 over 350 fires with a number exceeding 100,000ha
- Largest fire spread 100,000ha on first day
- Flame heights of 40+ metres
- Temperatures of over 1,200 degrees
Explosions at Santos’ other gas facilities
- In July 2019 in South Australia, Santos Moomba gas plant had a major explosion with flames 80m in the air
- In 2023 another major explosion at 60 million cubic feet capacity pipeline at Moomba
- Also in 2020 another serious incident at Big Lake SA but Santos will not release details
- The conclusion to the causes is poorly maintained infrastructure.
Pilliga biodiversity
- The Pilliga is Australia’s only intact Native Forest that has a mix of eastern and western climates making it our most important biodiversity refuge.
- One third of all birds in Australia have been documented here
- Approximately 300 native animals
- More than 14 types of frogs
- 32 mammals (including 12 bats)
- Approximately 50 types of reptiles
- 22 threatened animal species including the glossy black cockatoo, regent honey eater turquoise parrot, swift parrot, square tail kite, koala, spotted tail quoll, black striped wallaby, rufous Bettong and many more.
Alistair Donaldson, a local volunteer fire fighter also spoke about
- The danger of having a single access road into the gasfield during a fire
- The industrialisation of the forest means there are more chances of ignition from infrastructure and machinery
- During the summer of 2019/20, Santos had three flares operating in the Pilliga forest during the highest fire danger ratings.