Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank once again our volunteer and professional fire and emergency response services, who have recently been battling fires in my electorate of Forrest. Two days of severe lightning strikes saw several serious fires in the shires of Donnybrook Balingup and Dardanup. The Department of Fire and Emergency Services issued seven warnings to Donnybrook and Mumballup residents, with two at emergency level. Two of the intense fires razed over 6,000 hectares of national parks and farmland, and more than 100 firefighters and aerial support members fought to get the fires under control in really challenging conditions. The fires came just days after 75 firefighters contained a bushfire threatening the Thomson Brook community on the outskirts of Donnybrook. I want to thank those locals who fought in that. My thoughts are also with the locals who lost property or animals during these bushfires.

The summer months are particularly challenging for our volunteer bushfire brigades, our SES crews and our professional firefighters. So I want to thank them once again for protecting our regional communities and for the work they've done recently. I also want to thank the farmers, who often are the first people onto the fireground with their own home fire units when it's a neighbour or someone similar. They get out there and get this job done, often running the front of the fire before anybody else gets there. I want to thank those who did that in the property neighbouring ours recently.