How many could have been saved if some body decide to use
The Standard Emergency Warning
Signal on Friday before the Black saturday?
Warning
failure: Major alarm stayed silent
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25097075-661,00.html
Ashley Gardiner and Ben Packham
February 24, 2009 12:00am
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POLICE and fire
authorities failed to trigger a major alert on Black Saturday to
warn people of the disastrous bushfires.
As the Rudd
Government fast-tracks a national phone alert system,
the Herald Sun
can reveal an existing alarm signal
wasn't used on February 7.
The Standard Emergency Warning
Signal breaks into TV and radio broadcasts with a wailing siren
followed by audio instructions....................
''In his inquiry into Victoria's 2003 fires, Emergency
Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin said the existing alert system
should be used when necessary. But Victoria Police
spokesman Phil Shepherd said the signal was not issued on Black
Saturday.
"The (signal) is activated by police at the request of the
fire incident controller," Mr Shepherd said.
"Victoria Police did not receive any request from the
CFA to use
the Standard Emergency Warning Signal.
"Numerous urgent threat messages were issued by the
controlling agency through the media and, in particular, the
emergency broadcast to ABC radio.
"As we have said many times, this was a particularly rapid
and ferocious fire that occurred with little warning."
The failure to use the signal is expected to be investigated
by the royal commission into the bushfires.
The Country Fire Authority declined to comment and directed
queries to Mr Esplin.''
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so sad.The warning sys was there.No body use it!!
