Powerlines started $10m fire

West Australian
Saturday 21/2/2009 Page: 7

Western Power has announced plans to double its spending on bushfire mitigation after it was revealed yesterday that clashing powerlines caused bushfires that threatened homes and caused $10 million damage to State Government pine plantations. The State's energy watchdog has called on Western Power to defend its maintenance program after it found a split power-pole top and slipped bolt caused powerlines to sag and clash, sparking blazes which razed more than 2000ha of pine plantations near Yanchep on January 16.

Office of Energy Safety director Ken Bowron cited questions over Western Power's practices surrounding clashing powerlines at the Yanchep fire and flagged a wider audit. "A number of historical issues have arisen from clashing conductor incidents," Mr Bowron said yesterday. "We have investigated and dealt with Western Power on each of these at the time of the incident and there is an ongoing dialogue between the Office of Energy Safety and Western Power to resolve all outstanding issues. We propose that we will do a formal audit on clashing conductors in the future. "

The Yanchep fire is the latest of at least 10 fires over the past seven years caused by clashing power lines, faults or fallen power poles. Clashing power lines caused the Tenterden fires in 2003 that killed two women and also the Toodyay fires in 2007 which killed a local teacher. Western Power customer services general manager Mark de Laeter said inspections had been up to date at Yanchep but the work had not yet been carried out.

"Whilst we'd like to fix everything straight away, it's just not possible, we prioritise according to risk," Mr de Laeter said. "That's the challenging task, we've got a limited amount of funding and a limited amount of people that funding will pay for." He said the utility had made a submission to the State Government for $280 million on bushfire mitigation over next three years, up from $123 million.

"Electricity networks are inherently dangerous and we've got hundreds of thousands of line sections and millions of components and keeping up with that is a challenging task," Mr de Laeter said. The money would be spent on conductor clashing issues, pole-top insulation, and managing vegetation. Forest Products Commission general manager Paul Biggs said the Yanchep fires caused $10 million damage to its pine plantation and he was investigating the report.

"Our main priorities are obviously to repair the damage that has been done, to the best of our ability, and to try and do what we can to reduce the risk of more fires in the future," Mr Biggs said. "The initial cost of containing the fire, cleaning up the site and replanting is likely to be in the region of $10 million. "That figure does not include timber lost in the blaze, as we are still working to calculate the exact value. "