20 October 2004
AUDITOR GENERAL FINDS CHANGES NEEDED FOR MANAGING MAJOR BUSHFIRES
The preparedness of WA’s bushfire fighting organisations and their ability to coordinate a unified response to major bushfires in the State’s south-west has been examined by WA Auditor General Des Pearson.
In his report tabled in State Parliament today, Mr Pearson indicates that organisational arrangements for managing bushfires have not changed since their introduction over 50 years ago.
Whilst recognising the significant contribution of all fire fighters and especially volunteers, who are the backbone of bushfire fighting, system level changes were now necessary to establish a clear authoritative basis and a more cohesive structure for controlling major bushfires, he says.
Currently, the authority for fighting bushfires is shared between the 122 local governments in regional WA, the Fire and Emergency Services Authority and the Department of Conservation and Land Management, with each organisation having the power to manage bushfires and command resources within its own jurisdiction.
However, in the event of a major bushfire:
- There is no command structure to ensure that if the fire develops beyond the expertise of local personnel, a more experienced person will take over control.
- There is no single body which has the legislative authority to prioritise how resources are used at a local, regional or state level during multiple bushfires.
This absence of a State-wide command structure across volunteer brigades weakens the capacity for managing major bushfires effectively, especially when there are multiple bushfires burning simultaneously, says Mr Pearson.
Further, the State’s bushfire emergency management plan (that activates a regional or State level response to a bushfire emergency, and the mechanisms for co-ordinating fire fighting organisations, emergency services, and other support agencies) has not been clearly endorsed by local governments and lacks legislative authority, thus undermining its effective implementation in major bushfire emergencies.
Just how well prepared fire fighting organisations were to tackle major bushfires was also scrutinised, with Mr Pearson detailing a series of challenges and inadequacies that needed to be addressed.
His findings included:
- The Australian Inter-Service Incident Management System (AIIMS) has been adopted by the State fire fighting authorities in Western Australia and throughout Australia, however, its adoption at local government level is varied, with some local government brigades fully embracing it, and others not.
- Training and development issues need attention across all fire fighting organisations:
- There are barriers to the take-up of training by volunteers, which impacts on volunteer safety during major bushfires.
- CALM faces challenges in maintaining its current level of trained staff.
- FESA needs to ensure it has sufficient staff to effectively assume control of major bushfires, if requested.
- Major bushfires have exposed local level planning weaknesses which have reduced the effectiveness of fire fighting efforts.
- Problems with telecommunications systems across organisations have hampered effective operations.
- CALM relies on heavy machinery contractors to support its fire fighting capability and while past shortfalls in availability have been rectified, consistent monitoring is needed to avoid this happening again.
- The adequacy of volunteer appliances and equipment could not be determined, as the model for determining resource needs based on bushfire risk, has not been systematically applied across all local governments.
Commenting today, Mr Pearson said: “This examination has focused on the improvements needed for managing major bushfire emergencies and is not intended to detract from the invaluable work done by fire fighting organisations, and volunteer and career fire fighters, in successfully extinguishing the large number of fires that do not escalate into major bushfires.
For this reason, it is important to ensure that both volunteer and career firefighters have the safest and most effective system possible for combating bushfires.”
Ends/.
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