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Wilmington: How prescribed burns helped control a bushfire

A bushfire was ignited by lightning in the northern section of Mount Remarkable National Park near Wilmington on a high fire danger day in February 2025. How events played out in the following days and weeks demonstrate how a strategic prescribed burn program can help authorities extinguish a blaze that is threatening communities and the environment.

Here we take a closer look at how the Wilmington bushfire progressed – and how carefully planned fuel reduction played a critical role in getting the blaze under control.

The story of the bushfire

overhead of large plumes of smoke from a hilly area with an airplane wing in shot — Three days into the fire - smoke in Mount Remarkable National Park

It was hot and windy on Monday 3 February 2025 and local NPWS staff in the Yorke and Mid North region were on high alert with dry lightning forecast. Staff were put on call for the evening at 4pm, and at 4:30pm a lightning strike ignited a fire in the northwest section of Mount Remarkable National Park.

Two NPWS quick response vehicles were initially deployed along with two tankers from the Wilmington CFS brigade and CFS air support. But the fire quickly grew more intense in rocky, steep terrain with limited access tracks. Aerial water bombing and a long hoselay run from fire trucks were used to try and contain the blaze, but intense fire behaviour made this unachievable and an early evening wind change led to the fire spreading rapidly in all directions and jumping tracks.

A bushfire in this large, drought-affected national park in the height of summer with more hot weather on the way, was a worst-case scenario and CFS was quick to declare the bushfire a major incident. This meant a level 3 Incident Management Team (IMT) was deployed to Port Augusta the following morning, made up of specialist staff and volunteers from across the state.

The fire significantly increased in size overnight due to hot conditions and dry fuels, and it continued to expand south and east over the next 4 days.

The IMT collected and evaluated information quickly including the bushfire prevention works that NPWS had strategically put in place over the last decade. Of particular importance were a series of prescribed burns through the centre of the park. A combination of control strategies was used to contain the fire to the north of the reserve with these areas of lower fuel giving firefighters options, including the time and space to safely put in backburns from the ground and air, that helped stop the bushfire’s spread.

The park: Mount Remarkable National Park

close up of a yellow footed rock wallaby — Yellow-footed rock wallabies are rated as vulnerable. Photo Martin Stokes.

Mount Remarkable National Park is a highly visited area around 3.5 hours north of Adelaide in the southern Flinders Ranges, popular for hiking, camping and mountain biking. Nearby towns such as Melrose and Wilmington though small have high influxes of tourists during events and as holiday makers.

Mt Remarkable is an important haven for native plants and animals, such as threatened orchid species, yellow-footed rock wallabies, and chestnut-rumped heathwrens, which can be impacted by fire.

The issues

Bushfires pose a significant risk to local townships and agricultural properties in the surrounding areas where landowners risk the loss of their livelihoods, animals and homes.

The size and deceptively rugged terrain of Mount Remarkable National Park make it vulnerable to bushfires, with 16,500 ha of continuous native vegetation. Hot summers and dry lightning storms experienced in the area along with strong winds create a recipe for dangerous bushfire conditions. Fighting fires is challenging due to inaccessible steep and rocky terrain.

The entire park burnt in a bushfire in 1988, and ecologists and fire managers have since taken steps to prevent this from happening again to protect communities as well as threatened native plants and animals.

In 2014 a bushfire was started by lightning in Bangor, an area just south of Mt Remarkable resulting in the loss of 5 homes, stock, fencing, crops, vineyards and ForestrySA plantations. This fire took 31 days to contain and is etched in the memories of locals and firefighters alike.

The planning

The Wilmington bushfire provides an example of how a long term strategic prescribed burn program can help firefighters control a bushfire.

Mt Remarkable National Park is 100 times the size of the Adelaide CBD and creating fuel reduced areas in the otherwise continuous vegetation in a park of this size requires long term strategic planning. NPWS fire planning staff assessed bushfire risk using local knowledge and fire history, drawing on the lessons learned from the Bangor fire which had many similarities to the Wilmington fire.

The resulting Southern Flinders Ranges Fire Management Plan guided local staff over many years, to plan and progressively implement bushfire mitigation activities. Prescribed burns are the most ecologically sensitive and effective tool to create fuel reduced areas in this landscape and have been the main method used. The objective of the prescribed burn program was to prevent a fire burning the entire park in a single event by interrupting or slowing the spread of a potential bushfire.

Planning at Mt Remarkable National Park is dynamic and evolves over time - each prescribed burn builds on the landscape protection provided by the last burn or bushfire, creating adjacent fuel breaks. This has created large fuel reduced areas without burning too much habitat in one go, leaving adjacent areas as refuge for fauna.

The result

map of bushfire area and prescribed burn sites — These historical burns were part of a long-term strategy. Planning puts these burns, fire tracks, fuel breaks and other prevention measures into our beloved parks.

The Wilmington bushfire was declared contained after 11 days of extremely hard work by firefighters on the ground and in the air. The fire burned less than a third of the park, a significantly better outcome than the 1988 Mt Remarkable fire. It also had less severe impacts compared to the 2014 Bangor bushfire, which devastated homes and livelihoods, affected SA Water and ForestrySA land, took a month to contain and still has remediation works continuing today.

Fuel reduced areas created by the most recent prescribed burns in 2021, 2022 and 2023 caused the fire front to slow or self-extinguish. That gave the Incident Management Team the time and space to develop well considered plans and choose the most appropriate tactics. Due to the challenging terrain the main tactics involved the use of aircraft to drop retardant lines adjacent to and linking the fuel reduced areas. This provided ground crews and aircraft with an anchor point from which to undertake backburns. Heavy earthmoving equipment was also used to create fuel breaks where it was appropriate on the north-western fire edge.

With guidance from the NPWS Natural Values Team, measures were taken to avoid impacting significant species and ecosystems where possible while minimising the fire’s extent. Monitoring and recovery strategies are now being put in place for these species and habitats.