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THE Country Fire Authority has been accused of blocking city
firefighters from helping fight Victoria's horrific fires.
Leaked emails accuse the CFA of blocking Metropolitan Fire
Brigade management and CFA professional firefighters, and
incompetently handling the fires.
The United Firefighters Union will tell the royal commission on
the fires that the CFA panicked and was ill-prepared, despite
knowing conditions would be the worst in Victoria's history.
The taxpayer-funded firefighters, who are better trained than
volunteers, say up to 1200 of them have sat around during, and
since, the blazes of February 7 — while overseas and interstate
crews have been flown in to help.
The CFA and MFB deny the claims and say the firefighters and
equipment were used "appropriately".
The union claims CFA managers, or incident controllers, blocked
MFB crews from fighting fires in at least two areas.
Union secretary Peter Marshall claimed one incident controller
told an MFB crew: "Over my dead body are we going to use you."
"The MFB commander went back and briefed the troops and said,
'This is the attitude, they don't want to use us'," he said.
At another location, an MFB taskforce was not deployed by the
CFA incident controller "because of parochial issues".
"When they actually got in there the CFA said: 'Where have you
been? … we've been waiting for you for ages, we needed you'.
"This is dynamite. It's hard to say it cost lives, but resources
that have been paid for by the community in the form of fire
appliances and personnel sat idle while people lost their houses
and indeed their life."
The union has been swamped with emails from members frustrated
at not being sent to fight the fires. One says: "I look at the news
footage and see volunteers dead on their feet … we are sitting on
our arses."
A paid CFA firefighter said he was one of about six
professionals who sat doing nothing at a station in Melbourne's
outer north when the fire started.
"We listened to the events, including guys getting burnt out,
but we were not deployed," he said. "We contacted the duty officers
and said: 'We are here.' I don't think they knew.
"There are 200 (CFA) career firefighters who are disgusted about
it but too fearful to put pen to paper or stand in front of a
camera over it because of their careers," he said.
Another firefighter from near Geelong said professional
firefighters were prevented from joining the fight.
He said CFA management wrongly thought that no professional
firefighters were available.
Parochialism and politics are the worst problems, the
firefighters say, with CFA managers viewing the MFB as rivals for
funds, bolstering arguments for merging the two.
Some CFA volunteers also do not want outsiders fighting fires on
their turf.
CFA chief officer Russell Rees said all firefighters had been
used appropriately during the emergency. "There's no question the
MFB were used appropriately and are still being used in specialised
areas such as victim identification," he said.
MFB spokesman Simon Breer said the brigade had provided up to
1000 personnel. He said he did not believe there was a problem with
its involvement.
AAP
''Parochialism and politics are the worst problems, the
firefighters say, with CFA managers viewing the MFB as rivals for
funds, bolstering arguments for merging the two.
Some CFA volunteers also do not want outsiders fighting
fires on their turf.''
--human nature lah. ha ha.
Damn it!!
