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Minister buoys aerial hopes

Emergency Services Minister Rob Johnson has buoyed the spirits of advocates for aerial fire fighting in the East Kimberley.

Mr Johnson is urging local stakeholders to resubmit their proposal for aerial firefighting for viewing by new FESA chief executive Wayne Gregson.

During his visit to Kununurra last week, Mr Johnson suggested the new FESA head, who replaces axed former chief executive Jo Harrison-Ward, would reconsider a fresh application to combine aerial fire suppression and onground firefighting in the East Kimberley.

Local advocates claim the approach would help stop annual wildfires that endanger lives and infrastructure in the East Kimberley but their proposal was previously rejected due to the absence of adequately trained personnel in the region.

“If they want to put a new submission in to FESA, we’ll have a fresh look at it,” Mr Johnson said.

“Our new CEO, who has come to the job with a completely open mind, if they can convince his staff and his people that the suggestion that they are putting forward is a feasible one and will work then I’m sure that they’ll look at it but we’re not promising anything.”

Ord Land and Water co-ordinator Dick Pasfield said previous correspondence regarding the proposal was from FESA so a response from the minister was promising.

“It certainly was optimistic,” Mr Pasfield said.

“I was quite buoyed by what I heard … we think we’ve got something

to offer.

“The minister said he’d like to see a proposal go up again and we will certainly be working hard over the next few weeks to pull together and put together a new submission.”

Mr Pasfield said the new proposal would suggest a different model for running and funding aerial suppression in the East Kimberley to that in the South West.

He said with trained personnel, the firefighting service could be run cost effectively.

“FESA’s quite right in what they say, that you’ve got to have communication between the plane and your ground crew and you’ve got to have your ground crew trained,” he said.