Top Australia firefighter criticised over wildfires
MELBOURNE (AFP) – An inquiry into Australia’s worst bush blazes heard that a top firefighter did not warn residents properly as flames bore down on their homes, engulfing entire towns and killing 173.
Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) head Russell Rees failed to perform basic tasks during February’s disaster and was “divorced from fundamental aspects” his job, the chief lawyer assisting the judicial commission said.
Counsel Jack Rush questioned Rees’ actions during the February firestorms, which were caused by record high temperatures, strong winds and drought-parched countryside.
Rush said protecting lives was a core part of Rees’ job but the CFA chief had not issued accurate and timely warnings about the devastating fires that ravaged large parts of rural Victoria.
“It is a core responsibility (of the CFA chief) to warn communities of the risk of fire,” Rush said, dismissing Rees’s statement that his role did not involve direct control of firefighting.
Rush is the senior lawyer assisting the royal commission into the fires and the inquiry chief, retired judge Bernard Teague, must now decide whether to include the damning assessment of Rees in an interim report due August 17.
The inquiry was set up in the aftermath of the bushfires to examine how the seasonal blazes raced out of control to become Australia’s worst peace-time disaster.
The number of deaths eclipsed the previous record bushfire toll of 75 in 1983, destroying more than 2,000 homes, forcing 10,000 to evacuate and scorching huge swathes of Victoria.
