News
22 February, 2025
Flames ignite debate
A Somerset Dam home was razed despite a fire truck sitting just 100 metres down the road, but was allegedly unusable because no volunteers lived locally.
Instead, the home was left to burn for “an agonising 30 minutes” before a Fire and Rescue truck from Esk arrived. By then, the house was fully alight and could not be saved.
Neighbor Gary Jones wrote on social media that the wait time for the fire, which occurred on February 10, was “heartbreaking,” given a rural fire truck was locked up less than 100 meters away.
“It was heartbreaking for the neighbors that turned up early enough to help, only to find out we couldn’t access the local rural fire truck, so all we could do was wait,” he wrote.
“As anyone who has experienced a house fire knows – minutes matter, and by the time the members of the Mount Brisbane Rural Fire Brigade (MBRFB) turned up with the combination to access the rural truck, the neighbors managed to save the neighboring houses from catching alight with garden hoses.”
A Queensland Fire Department (QFD) spokesperson confirmed to The Sentinel that the first responding crew, from Esk Auxiliary Fire and Rescue Station, arrived on scene 27 minutes after they were alerted to the incident.
The QFD spokesperson said the nearest Queensland Fire and Rescue (QFR) resources respond as the lead in structural fires, with rural fire services (such as MBRFB) providing support to their QFR colleagues.
“Rural Fire Service Queensland (RFSQ) are the lead response service for bushfire incidents; however, RFSQ volunteer members are not trained in internal structural firefighting roles,” they said.
“Auxiliary firefighters and RFSQ volunteer members work on an on-call basis and respond to emergencies when demand arises.
“All active members of Mount Brisbane Rural Fire Brigade were paged to assist, and those that were available, attended.”
The spokesperson added that only trained members of QFR and RFSQ are able to access and respond to jobs using equipment owned by these services.
“Members of the public are not allowed to access resources or equipment,” they said.
Three QFR auxiliary crews, including from Kilcoy and Esk, and one RFSQ rural crew, from MBRFB, responded to the incident.
Several locals stated the main issue wasn’t that members of the MBRFB live out of town, but rather the lack of volunteers at rural brigades.
“Rural fi ries depend solely and heavily on volunteers. If there aren’t any living locally, then perhaps some local people who live in the village and near the rural fire shed ought to put their hand up and volunteer? Can’t expect change without being proactive,” one local wrote.
“The issue is that there seems to be a lack of people willing to join a volunteer organisation, and further to that, are blaming volunteers for not attending a house fire sooner,” another wrote.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation and is undetermined at this time.
