WONBOYN NSP PROVIDES SAFE HAVEN FROM DEADLY FIRES Wonboyn is a small isolated community on the NSW South Coast near the Victorian border, surrounded by kilometres of forest in all directions (except to the east) and with only one road in. The community has been proactive about its own fire protection for decades and the local NSW RFS brigade station has long served as the Neighbourhood Safer Place (NSP). Over the 2019/20 summer, Wonboyn experienced a number of days when the sky turned to dark night with columns of smoke thousands of metres tall. There were fires all along the South Coast on 4 January, but the Border fire ran further and faster than any others on that day and worried even seasoned firefighters. Most people had enough time to leave town, but not everyone in Wonboyn chose to leave. The following is an account from Adele Thomson, the Wonboyn Brigade member in charge of the operation of the NSP. 32 BUSH FIRE bulletin || OPERATIONS
Above: The aftermath of the Border fire near Wonboyn. Photo by Malcolm Thomas.
We had prepared for days and weeks before. We’d experienced a few Total Fire Ban days leading up to Christmas and also an unusually high number of days of severe fire danger. For every declared Total Fire Ban day, the NSP was activated, the trucks were out and the brigade was in stand-up mode. We knew that we were heading for a fire event that would probably impact Wonboyn, and were closely watching the progress of the Border fire coming toward us from Victoria. On 31 December 2019, Wonboyn and the surrounding area including Kiah, Narrabarba and Timbillica received an Emergency Alert SMS. Almost all Wonboyn residents who planned to leave left the town that day, a stream of vehicles headed towards Eden. Around 30 of us planned to stay and increased our efforts to prepare for the fire event. Luckily, the wind abated and the fire did not approach the village area on New Year’s Eve. Everyone was relieved, but we were anxiously waiting for the fire to come and focused on making our properties as fire safe as possible over the coming days.
