Residents of a Blue Mountains town who were forced to defend themselves against an out-of-control backburn during the black summer bushfires are concerned fire trails in the area are not being maintained ahead of the fire season.
Guardian Australia has seen photographs of fallen trees obstructing two fire trails in Bilpin near the Tutti Fruitti cafe and surrounding homes, which were destroyed when the Rural Fire Service lost control of the backburn it lit near Mount Wilson in December 2019.
Bilpin resident Martin Tebbutt said the trails had been “completely” obstructed for about six weeks and he was concerned there was “just no maintenance at all” being done on them.
The trails form part of a 75km network of fire trails in the area, which the RFS opened with some fanfare in 2020.
Tebbutt said he feared fire trails – which are meant to ensure firefighters can access fires and safely contain them – in other parts of New South Wales could be in a similar condition despite the state’s fire season having officially begun on 1 October.
The emergency services minister, Jihad Dib, declined to comment.
NSW’s strategic fire trails network spans more than 30,000km. Of those, 11,300km are on land managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), 5,650km are on land managed by the Forestry Corporation, 4,650km are on crown land and 8,500km are on land privately owned or under other arrangements such as council leases.
Guardian Australia understands the fire trails in Bilpin were cleared after the RFS was contacted for comment. The agency said it had not received any formal complaints of blocked fire trails in the Hawkesbury area.
A spokesperson for the RFS said the responsibility for maintaining fire trails lay with the agency or party that owned the land on which they were located.
“Despite this work by land managers and dedicated fire trail officers from the RFS, it is not guaranteed that all trails will be accessible at all times,” the spokesperson said. “The RFS encourages any issues to be reported to the local fire control centre or via the RFS website.”
Last month, the Minns government announced it had allocated $7.9m for maintenance of fire trails on crown land in this year’s budget.
Guardian Australia asked the office of the treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, what funding the government had allocated for the remainder of the state’s fire trail network but didn’t receive a response before publication.
One of the deputy captains of the Kurrajong Heights RFS, Brian Williams, who has served in the local brigade for more than 50 years, said it was an issue that multiple agencies were responsible for maintaining fire trails.
“We’re having real trouble with [NPWS] closing fire trails down and not maintaining them,” said Williams, who recently stepped down as the president of the Volunteer Fire Fighters Association.
“Every time we get a bad fire we’ve got to get a big machine in and clear them. It’s really frustrating.”
But Williams said fire trails would not “save Bilpin” unless more cool hazard reduction burning was done to reduce fuel loads.
“To get the best environmental result and the result for the community you need to be burning on no less than the seven-eight-year cycle … or the fire gets too hot,” he said.
A spokesperson for the NPWS said it managed 31,148km of fire trails across NSW.
They said the service had spent more than $42m on fire trail upgrades and maintenance in the past financial year and all met the RFS standards.
“Trails not identified as fire trails and not required for other park management activities may be closed from time to time, consistent with the requirements of the reserve plans of management,” they said.
Tebbutt has been in a battle with the RFS to improve the volunteer firefighting agency’s accountability since the escaped Mount Wilson backburn.
The retired farmer has repeatedly raised concerns that the fire that devastated his community could return if a 76-hectare parcel of crown land on Bells Line of Road, which was engulfed by the escaped backburn in 2019, is not cleared.
In April last year, the RFS assessed the block of land. The internal report said “only in extreme conditions would a fire be of major concern and possibly leave the land in question”.
Tebbutt argued it was under “extreme conditions” that the Grose Valley fire “exploded” from the land opposite his house in 2019. Nearly 18 months later, he said the regrowth was now thicker than it had been before the 2019-20 fires.
The land is managed by Hawkesbury city council. In June, the RFS wrote the council a letter, seen by Guardian Australia, to say a fresh assessment had determined a “bush fire hazard does exist”, which was threatening neighbouring properties.
The RFS told the council it was “essential” that a number of hazard reduction works be undertaken, but the council was reluctant to do so.
In internal council correspondence, the council’s general manager said the land was “not yet within the prescription for hazard reduction burning” and there were issues with the works requested by the RFS, including that they risked breaking an important wildlife corridor.
After being contacted by Guardian Australia, a spokesperson for Hawkesbury council said it had provided consent for the RFS to undertake “limited mechanical hazard reduction work” along this section of the road.
