The Mt Clear Fire was located in the Booth Range Namadgi National Park and started on Wednesday night (16th) from a lightning strike.  MAPS involvement was from Thursday 17th through to Sunday evening on the 20th. The fire was in a remote area and only accessible initially for the Remote Area Firefighting Team (RAFT) and water bombing aircraft. The fire remained under 50 hectares in size.

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The MAPS members deployed to ESA HQ in Fairbairn were Heike Apps, Kristy Van Putten, Frank Blanchefield and Kate Waghorn.  For three days we had 2 members deployed for 12 hour day shifts with one working in the Planning room and one in the Operations room.  The MAPS member working in the planning room did the mapping for the Incident Action Plan (IAP), predictive maps and any ‘one off’ maps. They also ensured enough maps were printed for the firefighters.

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The MAPS member in the Operations room ensured they had the latest linescan and hotspot data plus gpx data from the fireground. They mapped the fire edge and ensured they had the latest data on the dozer trail being constructed plus information on the location of water (buoywalls). After the data was updated it was saved so the person in the planning room could use the updated information. The data was uploaded to ICON regularly.

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There was good communications between the MAPS members plus MAPS and the planning team. Everything worked fairly smoothly and though we had a few small glitches they were quickly addressed.

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On Sunday afternoon there was not much happening for MAPS on the Mt Clear fire but Steve was busy as an air observer around Canberra and we mapped the Wallaroo Road fire (polygon provided by Steve) and Mt Taylor fire (polygon taken from a photo provided by Steve).