Page 1608 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2017
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(b) what planning or actions it is undertaking for when the built-up areas encroach onto the New South Wales border; and
(c) whether it is appropriate to return the management of bushfires within the BAZ to the method recommended in the McLeod Report.
I am pleased to stand today to speak to the motion on the notice paper in my name asking the government to explain why important recommendations the government agreed to arising from Ron McLeod’s report into the 2003 bushfires were changed in 2011. On 18 January 2003 bushfires burning in the Brindabella mountains for more than a week broke containment lines, eventually claiming four lives, destroying close to 500 homes and causing up to a billion dollars in damages. Two days before the fire storm hit the suburbs, the cabinet, including the then Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, knew that a potential disaster was on Canberra’s doorstep but did nothing to ensure that the Canberra community was warned.
On the same day, the ACT fire brigade commenced planning for their involvement should the fires enter urban Canberra and to supplement the existing ACT bushfire service management team. However, Coroner Maria Doogan found that senior personnel in the then Emergency Services Bureau, despite knowing how dire the situation was, failed to take action within their respective areas of responsibility to ensure that public warnings were widely broadcast and delivered to the community, going so far as to say that senior personnel deliberately withheld information from the community. There was never an official order to evacuate homes and this had catastrophic consequences. Four residents died protecting their homes. Hundreds of people were injured.
In addition, Ron McLeod concluded in his report on the disaster that the fires might have been contained had they been attacked more aggressively in the 24 hours or so after they broke out. On the morning of 18 January 2003 residents woke to the news that fires had broken containment lines overnight and were now roaring towards Canberra’s suburbs. By late afternoon home owners fought in vain to save their homes. By 2.45 pm the Chief Minister declared a state of emergency. Fifteen minutes later the first houses were lost in Duffy. Not long after, homes in Rivett, Holder, Chapman and Kambah were lost.
The coroner concluded that Mr Stanhope, on the day the fires ripped through Canberra’s western suburbs, either misunderstood or deliberately downplayed the severity of the situation as he referred to the declaration of the state of emergency as an “administrative measure” and told residents not to be unduly anxious or alarmed.
Fourteen years on there are concerns among the firefighting community that the lessons of the 2003 bushfires have started to become lost, that ACT Fire & Rescue is understaffed, under-resourced and underprepared in the event of another bushfire emergency, and that there will be another. It behoves those elected to represent the people of the ACT and ensure that we are prepared and have the most appropriate resources available and ready.
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