Russell Rees, chief officer of Victoria’s Country Fire Authority, yesterday said firefighters could no longer guarantee saving the lives of those who chose to surround themselves with vegetation despite the obvious fire risks.
His warnings came as it emerged that Victoria had ignored repeated demands to reduce bushfire hazards and crack down on “tree-changer” housing estates in the years leading up to Saturday’s deadly fires, which are believed to have killed more than 200 people and left 7000 homeless.
The state was berated by the federal government in 2007 for ignoring some of the findings of two national bushfire inquiries held after the 2003 Canberra blaze.
As shattered communities prepare to rebuild from the ashes, the Australasian Fire Authorities Council yesterday called for more controls over housing development in bushland on the urban fringe.
The CFA’s Mr Rees told The Weekend Australian that firefighters were on the “receiving end” of the tree-change trend in which people choose to escape urban living for a bush lifestyle amid dense vegetation on the fringes of major cities.
“We’ve got to choose,” he said. ‘If we choose to live in this way, then who do we blame? My fear is that people will say the fire service failed (last Saturday) and I will go to my grave saying we fought our guts out.
“Fundamentally, our community is choosing to live in a way I can’t, and our people can’t, guarantee their survival. Why do we choose a system of civilisation that puts itself at so much risk?”
AFAC – representing the nation’s fire and emergency services – yesterday criticised Victoria’s “piecemeal approach” to the planning and construction of houses in bushfire-prone zones.
“Currently there is not suitable and comprehensive legislation,” AFAC chief executive Naomi Brown said. “This includes such things as the construction and maintenance standards of buildings, planning for new sub-divisions, and defendable spaces around structures so the property can be defended during a fire. There is no cohesive approach to assessing and enforcing the application of existing controls that are clearly linked to the fire risk around Victoria and Australia.”
Similar concerns were raised by the federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in a submission to Victoria’s 2007 bushfire inquiry. “There is a clear need to manage the bushfire hazard more effectively than current practices seem to be achieving,” it said.
“The following important issues need to be addressed: improved fire management planning at the urban interface; improved access for firefighting; enhanced implementation of effective prescribed-burning programs; and ongoing applied fire management research at the state level.”
The firefighters’ union yesterday called on the federal Government to seize control of fire management – including the introduction of an automatic emergency-alert system – from the states and territories to save lives.
“We’ve just lost 200 people, for God’s sake,” United Firefighters Union national secretary Peter Marshall said. “Multi-millions of dollars have been spent on bushfire research and what’s it done?
“Each fire service … has got different methods and they’re all running their own race. I’m very fearful of this (Victorian tragedy) happening again.”
Mr Marshall said state and territory governments, including Victoria, had failed to learn the lessons from other killer fires, such as the 2003 blazes that razed 500 homes in Canberra.
“The recommendations from the (Victorian) royal commission will be no different to those that arose from the inquiries into Ash Wednesday, the Dandenong fires and the Canberra fires, that haven’t been implemented,” he said.
His comments come as the Victorian Government’s chief fire officer, Ewan Waller, revealed that there were critical gaps in intelligence at the height of the bushfires which made it difficult to deliver timely warnings to communities.
He said an extraordinarily dense and high blanket of smoke from the fierce fires near Kinglake late on Saturday had cut off vital intelligence about the movement of the fire fronts.
“It became too dangerous for our planes to fly and to map the edge of the fires so for quite a while we could not get the intelligence we wanted,” Mr Waller said. “We had to rely on bits and pieces – reports from the field and watching satellite information.”
The CFA’s incident controller responsible for moving fire trucks and tankers during the height of the fires around Kinglake last weekend has also admitted that the fires were too big for any effective firefighting response.
“It moved through with such ferocity that there was nothing the local brigades could do,” said the CFA’s Jason Lawrence.
“We could not provide any overarching control to any effective degree. We were requesting assistance for more resources but around our areas all resources were already in use.”
Victorian Premier John Brumby announced yesterday that former Supreme Court judge Bernard Teague would chair a royal commission into the bushfires.
“Victorians rightly want and deserve to know all the details about how the bushfires occurred,” Mr Brumby said. “That’s why the royal commission will have the broadest possible terms of reference and capacity to inquire into every aspect of these fires … no stone will be left unturned.”
The CFA’s Mr Rees said he believed climate change was responsible for the freak fires of last weekend.
“That is my belief, 100 per cent,” he said. “There is no doubt we are suffering more extreme events … the spike in the changing weather is getting worse.”
Mr Rees’s call for change echoed warnings raised by AFAC in a submission to the 2007 parliamentary inquiry.
“The rural-urban interface in Victoria cannot be made fireproof,” AFAC warned at the time.
“The choice to live and work in areas where there is a risk to people and property from the effects of bushfire means that Victorians in these areas are, to an extent, trading lifestyle and location choices for a vulnerability to fire events.”
AFAC said people living in bushland on the city fringes and in the countryside could not expect an inner-city fire service.
“These days many people living with the rural-urban interface expect that a fire truck will arrive at their door to put out a wildfire, in a similar manner to the urban firefighters responding to a building fire within a city,” it said.
“This is an unrealistic expectation, which in most situations cannot be met.”