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News Response :: Black Saturday warning fell short, Opposition says

Well it seems what we all knew was coming has already started. It would seem that the state opposition has decided it's been long enough to attempt to gain some political ground on the Black Saturday fires. The opposition has begun attacking the state govt for apparently not providing enough warning about the horrendous weather conditions that where expected for Black Saturday. To that I say, bullshit... Absolute utter nonsense... There where plenty of warnings including detailed warnings that filtered down through all levels of the CFA. Hell, my home brigade which is not even in what I would categorize as an extreme risk area put handouts in everyone's letterboxes advising them to use caution and to report all fires. We also advised them to make the decision to leave or stay early.

As the horror stories begin to filter out about what people have seen over the few days after black Saturday that appears to be a re-occuring thing. There wasn't alot that fire authorities could have done to warn these people when the CFA itself had no idea of what was coming. Especially when the fires where actually active. There where so many large fires appearing around the state that it took some time to put into place the incident management teams required to manage such events. Especially from listening to the Beechworth area fires develop live on a CFA scanner it was just complete madness.

The fact is that not a lot could have been done to save the lives that where lost. People would not have left their homes on Black Saturday and the fact is that that is all that could have saved them. If people had have left that morning they would have been fine. But why would they? All people would have done, had they been warned more, is try to fortify their house. Which would have been pointless. When you hear about fully loaded CFA appliances fleeing houses they where tasked to protect what chance does some bloke in a singlet with a garden hose stand.

The fact is, nothing could be done to prevent the tragic loss of life that occured on Black Saturday. An emergency alerting system may have decreased the number but IMHO people would not have left, nor does the CFA have the power to make people leave, when they should have. People still would have stayed, and prepared for the worst, and then, at the last minute as they saw how bad the fire was, they would have fled for their lives as occured on Saturday.

There are many things to take from this, but that the agencies involved didn't provide enough warning, is CERTAINLY NOT one of the things to take from this. The warnings where there, there is no need to put people into a panic as was done a few days ago with the text message. Besides, what would the text have said???

People have already hammered it into them NOT TO LEAVE if a fire front approaches, so a message stating that would be pointless, a message stating that bad weather conditions where expected would also have been pointless as nobody would have chosen to leave. They all would have stayed and fortified themselves and more deaths may have occured. It doesn't help that everyone is in such a spin over the catastrophe that was Black Saturday at the moment that they will jump everytime the smallest bit of hot weather approaches. Victoria Police and the CFA need to learn about crying wolf.

Fact is, none of this is helping, so the Victorian Opposition should just shut the hell up and find something that they can actually make a difference on, like, say, getting us some more trains in Melbourne. Anyway I've said my rant, and I hope someone takes something from this article written from the POV of a CFA Volunteer who is frustrated by people constantly saying more could be done. We can't freeze time and that's what it would have taken to fight these fires. There are some fires you cannot fight, and the ones on Black Saturday where those fires.

Article source - http://www.theage.com.au/national/black-saturday-warning-fell-short-opposition-says-20090309-8tb3.html