More than one hundred people packed into Moree Memorial Hall on Monday evening to raise their concerns about the high number of deliberately lit fires, as well as hear from local police, firefighters and the NSW Arson Squad.

The town meeting was organised by Moree Plains Shire Council in conjunction with Barwon Local Area Command to inform the community about the LAC’s operations with the NSW Arson Squad to address the ongoing issue around suspicious fires being lit around town.

“The strength of the numbers here tonight shows that the community identifies a problem and you want answers and you want action and hopefully we’ll be here tonight to talk about what the police can do for the community, and, more importantly, what the community can do for us,” Barwon Local Area Command Acting Superintendent Scott Tanner said.

“I’ve lost count of the amount of fatal house fires I’ve been to over the years and I’ve seen the effect that it has on the families.

“Some of those fires were started by kids playing with matches, and all the way up to where people have had malicious intent.

“What you’ll see tonight is a wealth of information to explain some of the processes we have to go through, the effects fire does have on the community and most of all we want to hear feedback from the community and we’ll try to answer your questions as best as we can.”

Detective Sergeant Hassan El-Khansa from the NSW Arson Squad gave a presentation about the danger of bushfires, the methods by which police investigate fires and information about the penalties for deliberately lighting fires.

“All fires start small,” he said.

“Every fire starts with a spark and so while someone might not have intent for a fire to take hold and really damage a community, their acts unfortunately through weather, being lucky or unlucky can result in a fire getting out of control.

“Bushfires are a police investigation. We need information from you to help us identify those responsible, to deter them from lighting further fires, to investigate the fires they have lit and, at it’s top, put those people behind bars to make sure they can’t light fires again.

“You cannot predict what the weather’s going to do. All deliberately lit fires we need to stamp out. People don’t have the expertise to understand when a fire is safe to light unless it’s one of the fire agencies doing it for a purpose.”

Fire and Rescue NSW Superintendent Tom Cooper, who is in charge of the New England North West region outlined their resource and staffing limitations and what impact deliberately lit fires have on local firefighters and the wider community. 

“I’ve been here for two years, and have been a firefighter for 31 years,” he said.

“I’ve noticed since I’ve arrived that in the short two years I’ve been here there’s been over 150 structural fires in this town which is basically unprecedented for the rest of my zone which covers 21 other towns in the area.

“Every time there’s a house fire and our firefighters roll into that house fire, our community coaching centre pages me to let me know there’s a house alight, so I get woken up at all hours of the night.

“A lot of time I look at my phone and see another house alight in Moree. 

“In Moree we have firefighters on duty from 8 o’clock in the morning until 4 o’clock in the afternoon and when they go home the fire station is staffed by retained firefighters. They’re paid a retainer and get paid per call that they attend.

“These firefighters, our retained firefighters have got families and they’re called away at all hours of the day and night.

“They place themselves at reasonable risk every time they get in that fire engine. 

“Any time they go to a fire, there’s a cost to the public, a cost to the owners of the house that burns down, even though there’s no-one in it, someone somewhere along line owns that house or is in control of that house and that asset is near gone and that costs the community. Every time our firefighters roll to a fire, we have to get another fire engine on the road to protect the town.

“The big issue we’re facing is fires that are fires that are being deliberately lit is if another fire occurs while our firefighters are committed to a fire, the person whose house catches alight next are going to be waiting for quite some time. The next nearest fire and rescue stations to Moree are Narrabri and Warialda.

“We’re obviously capably backed up by our partner service, the Rural Fire Service, but if you have a situation as we did in Tamworth in the last 10 days, every Rural Fire Service was committed to a fire outside the town boundary of Tamworth and I got a call from the Superintendent to tell me that if there were any fires that require back-up from Rural Fire Service this week, there won’t be anyone coming.

“I’m just urging everybody here tonight that if you know something, or you see something, say something.”

Rural Fire Service (RFS) district officer Stephen Parsons also spoke at the meeting.

He reinforced the fact that the RFS is made up predominantly of volunteers who “give their time freely and risk their life and limb most times to attack these fires”.

“It’s our volunteers that are carrying the burden of these suspicious fires and arson attacks,” he said.

Mr Parsons also explained about fire danger ratings, saying Moree usually sits at high, very high and extreme due to its high temperatures, variable winds, low humidity and little or no rain.

“From our point of view, any fire that starts on those conditions will be difficult to control,” he said.

“So the last thing we want to hear is a fire has been deliberately lit.

“We’ve had a number of suspicious grass fires in the area over the last couple of years. These fires do pose a real and dangerous risk to the community.”

Following the presentations by the various emergency services personnel, members of the community were given the opportunity to put their questions and concerns to the panel.

While many people wanted information about the process of clearing burnt-out houses, how many offenders have been convicted, or what resources police have, one of the biggest concerns was how to address the problem from the grassroots.

The crowd heard that the typical arson offender in Moree was a young person.

The need for greater parental responsibility and education of children were issues raised, but probably the biggest thing to come from the evening was a call for a safe place for young people to go instead of being out on the streets at all hours of the morning to escape their home life.

Local woman Natasha said it’s naive to assume that every child in Moree has a safe home to go to, particularly at 2am in the morning.

“I’m wondering, police, when you get a call at two/three in the morning to an eight-year-old lighting a fire and you know the dad’s at home on ice, where can you send them?” she asked. 

“Is there a safe place you can actually send them to other than dropping them off at home?

“Does the community need to establish something like a drop-in centre where the eight-year-old can go and be safe and not beaten up? Until we have a safe place for the eight-year-olds and the seven-year-olds, and the nine-year-olds and the ten-year-olds, what else are they going to be doing?”

In short, the answer was no, but Councillor Kerry Cassells is leading a push for that to change.

She has established a sub-group of council’s community safety meeting which will be soon calling for volunteers within the community to come together “to fix this problem”.

A number of other community members supported the call for a safe house.

Well-known community member Cathy Duncan said the Pius board would be willing to auspice a safe house but she said the biggest issue is funding.

“At the end of the day, we need funding,” she said.

“If the Department of Housing want to give us a house, but we need someone to run it, it can’t run on volunteers. There’s lots of great people in this town but it takes a strategy.

“This community needs to stand together and work together. The answers are within the community and people are willing to have a go.”

Another suggestion was bringing back a curfew, however police were quick to point out the flaws in that solution.

“Whilst it does sound good in theory, it does become devisive between police and young people,” Superintendent Tanner said.

Another town meeting has been scheduled for the first Monday in May to continue to address the issue.

In the meantime, emergency services urge anyone who has any information or knows someone who may be lighting fires to call CrimeStoppers on 1800 333 000.