• Specific Year
    Any

BUSH FIRES ACT 1954 - SECT 46

BUSH FIRES ACT 1954 - SECT 46

46 .         Bush fire control officer or forest officer may postpone lighting fire

        (1A)         Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act —

            (a)         subject to subsection (1B) a bush fire control officer, or the local government in whose district the land is situated may prohibit, or from time to time postpone the lighting of a fire, where in his or its opinion the fire, if lit, would be or become a source of danger by escaping from the land on which it is proposed to be lit;

            (b)         where a fire is burning on land and the bush fire control officer or the local government as the case may be is of the opinion that the fire is in danger of escaping from that land, he or it may direct that all reasonable steps be taken by the owner or occupier of the land to extinguish the fire or to prevent the fire from spreading.

        (1B)         Where it is proposed to light a fire within 3 km of a boundary of forest land, an authorised CALM Act officer may exercise the powers conferred by the last preceding paragraph to the exclusion of the exercise of those powers by a bush fire control officer or the local government but if an authorised CALM Act officer fails to exercise the powers a bush fire control officer or local government may exercise those powers.

        (2)         A person who lights a fire contrary to the provisions of this section or who fails to carry out any direction given to him pursuant to this section is guilty of an offence.

        Penalty: $10 000.

        (3)         If, as a result of the exercise of any power conferred by subsection (1A) or (1B), a person, who has paid a fee to a local government for a permit to light a fire, is precluded from doing so in such circumstances that the permit is of no use to him the local government shall, on being requested to do so, refund the fee to him.

        [Section 46 amended: No. 11 of 1963 s. 21; No. 113 of 1965 s. 8(1); No. 94 of 1972 s. 4 (as amended: No. 83 of 1973 s. 3); No. 65 of 1977 s. 48; No. 8 of 1987 s. 8; No. 78 of 1995 s. 147; No. 14 of 1996 s. 4; No. 38 of 2002 s. 39 and 40(1); No. 19 of 2010 s. 52(4).]