MELBOURNE

SHE confessed that she went to the hairdresser in the morning. She confessed she was interviewed for her memoirs in the afternoon. But a defiant Christine Nixon yesterday refused to quit despite a fierce public debate about her actions on Black Saturday.
“I intend to honour my commitment to bushfire-affected communities and to continue as the chair [of the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority],” she said.
Revealing further embarrassing details of her activities that day, she told a hastily assembled press conference in the foyer of her Collins Street workplace: “I had a haircut on the morning of February 7. It was a recurring appointment that I could have cancelled. At 9.30 that morning, I felt that I was able to keep the appointment knowing I was contactable through the hour and a half at the location.
“In the afternoon, as stated to the royal commission, between 1.30pm and 3pm, I returned from the State Emergency Response Co-ordination Centre to my office, where I continued to work on both personal and police business, as well as monitor the radio and the internet.
“The personal matter was a recurring commitment with a person assisting me with a biography. This meeting was cut short to around 45 minutes.”
The person helping with her memoir was Age journalist Jo Chandler, who had taken leave from the newspaper to work on the project for Melbourne University Press.
Echoing her evidence to the commission, Ms Nixon insisted: “None of those matters were more important than the bushfires, and they had no impact on my willingness or ability to do the job, or to be contactable on the day.
“I’ve said before and I’ll say again that with hindsight I wish I’d stayed at the co-ordination centre that evening. However, I strongly believe that it would not have changed what happened on the day.”
Her revelations followed two days in which she took leave as controversy raged, and rumors yesterday that a media outlet planned to run a story detailing what she had done during two periods on Black Saturday when, she told the commission, she was dealing with personal matters.
Reporters for several outlets had privately speculated that she was at the hairdressers in the morning. In evidence she had said she went to a regular appointment in Ascot Vale, that it took an hour and a half, and that the radio was playing in the background but the station was not the official fire station, 774.
Ms Nixon had told the commission that she received no information about the fires during the 90 minutes she was in her office, and that she was not told during that time that the Pomborneit-Weerite fire and the Churchill fire had ignited.
Ms Nixon has been under intense pressure to quit her post heading the reconstruction effort since it was revealed that she left the emergency control centre at the height of the blazes to dine at a North Melbourne pub. She was recalled to the commission on Wednesday to explain gaps in her evidence about that and other issues.
Asked yesterday why she was revealing the details now but did not do so in her evidence, she said, “I did not believe that it was relevant . . . The royal Commission had the opportunity on the day to ask questions, to judge my behaviours, and they chose not.”
Ms Nixon also hit out at “wild” speculation over her movements on Black Saturday and media approaches to her elderly parents.
Blaming some of the criticisms on her “enemies” from her time as police commissioner, Ms Nixon said her sex had also played a role. “I have been around a long time. As a woman I have always been judged more harshly than some others, but I’ve understood that.”
“The royal commission will determine whether or not I made a mistake,” she said.

MELBOURNE

VICTORIA’S fuel-reduction programs are inadequate and the state should burn off between 5 and 10 per cent of public land each year, senior counsel assisting told the Bushfires Royal Commission yesterday.
Jack Rush, QC, said Victoria urgently needed to increase burns to reduce the bushfire risk, with a minimum annual target of 385,000 hectares.
“The recommendations are not made because they are easy,” he said. “They are made because there was not sufficient fuel-reduction burning done in the past . . . The state of Victoria needs to accept the great need to work towards that sort of target to ensure people are properly protected, where the state is able to protect them, from bushfire.”
Counsel’s written submission argued that most burns should be between 500 and 1000 hectares, and that between 70 and 90 per cent of an area chosen for a planned burn should be burned: “Near towns it is sought to protect, very large areas for treatment might be required.”
It said planned burns moderated the spread of the Beechworth fire on Black Saturday and slowed the Kilmore fire in many places. “Even in catastrophic conditions, fuel reduction by planned burning can reduce spotting and ember[s].” In moderate conditions, it made it much more likely a fire would be suppressed, it said.
Mr Rush said compulsory acquisition of forested land in private hands might have to be considered because private owners could not be forced to comply with burns.
Victoria now burns about 130,000 hectares a year, or less than 2 per cent of public land.
Kerri Judd, SC, said the state backed a progressive increase in planned burning, but resisted the idea of a target. She also criticised the figure of 385,000 hectares as ill-informed because some public land, such as sand dunes and wet forest, was not treatable by fire.
The state’s submission estimated there were 5.5 million treatable hectares in total, and 5 per cent of that would be about 275,000 hectares. The state agreed that burning was one of the few ways to reduce fuel to limit the ignition, speed and intensity of bushfires. But it warned that planned burning was not a “silver bullet” in reducing risk and had to be considered with other strategies.
Complications included the limited range of weather conditions under which burns could be done.
The state’s submission also said that in forests such as those around Kinglake, which contain mountain ash, it would not be possible to burn the recommended 70 per cent of an area.

MELBOURNE

THE credibility of the former Victorian police chief Christine Nixon has been battered by admissions she had no contact with emergency services for almost three critical hours on Black Saturday, and that she misled the state’s bushfires royal commission.
Yesterday Ms Nixon was forced to deny repeatedly that she had deliberately failed to reveal she had gone out to dinner at a hotel on Black Saturday. Last week, Ms Nixon told the commission she had gone home, “had dinner, gone backward and forwards”. Media later revealed she had dined at a North Melbourne hotel with her husband and two friends.
Yesterday Ms Nixon strenuously denied that failing to mention the hotel was an attempt to avoid public embarrassment, saying she had thought the dinner irrelevant to the commission’s inquiries. She also denied that she had deliberately misled the commission on other issues over which she admitted she was inadvertently in error.
Phone records also contradicted that she kept in touch throughout the day with Assistant Commissioner Kieran Walshe, and that she spoke to the Police Minister, Bob Cameron, twice that day. She told the commission last week that she had not spoken to him.
There were no texts or calls sent or received on her phone from 6pm, when she went home, until 8.46 pm, a critical few hours in which police first learned that up to 40 people had been killed.
Under cross-examination from Rachel Doyle, SC, Ms Nixon said: “I didn’t intend to mislead anybody. I didn’t intend to misinform. That’s not a practice I have.
“I didn’t do a good enough job in preparing this statement and I have to say I have taken a very significant amount of heat since then for that. But that doesn’t mean that I was trying to be misleading. It doesn’t mean I was trying to undermine the commission or be inappropriate. It just means I should have paid more attention.”
Ms Nixon said the errors regarding Mr Walshe were because she just assumed she had spoken to him: “That had been my practice [in previous fires] to pick up the phone.”
Ms Nixon said it had been difficult to write her statement as she had never written an account of her movements that day, and she was trying to recall from memory matters now 14 months old.
Yesterday Ms Nixon admitted that she received no information at all about the fires between 6pm and 8.45pm.
Ms Doyle said: “It’s just that when you did a media interview on 3AW last week, you told Mr Mitchell that you had dinner for an hour and ‘people knew where I was’. Who knew where you were?”
Ms Nixon: “I certainly knew where I was and I didn’t see any point in telling anybody. What I mean by that was … they knew that they could contact me.”
Ms Nixon said she could have cancelled the dinner with no consequences. Ms Doyle asked why she had not. Ms Nixon said: “Because I was very confident … that we were dealing with things.”

THE credibility of former police chief Christine Nixon has been battered by admissions she had no contact with emergency services for almost three critical hours on Black Saturday, and that she misled the Bushfires Royal Commission.
In a gruelling 75-minute return to the commission yesterday, Ms Nixon was accused by counsel of deliberately concealing the fact that she went out to dinner on the night of Black Saturday as the disaster was unfolding.
She was also forced to concede that phone records showed she was not in touch with any of the key emergency services people for three hours on the night of February 7 last year, including while she was at dinner.
But Premier John Brumby last night continued to stand by her, rejecting fresh calls for her sacking as head of the bushfire reconstruction authority.
In her initial appearance at the commission last week, Ms Nixon testified that on the night of Black Saturday she had gone home “had a meal and then I went backwards and forwards”.
It was later revealed in the media that she had dined at a North Melbourne hotel with her husband and two friends.
Yesterday Ms Nixon strongly denied that her failure to mention the hotel was a deliberate attempt to avoid public embarrassment. She said she had thought the dinner irrelevant to the commission’s inquiries.
She also denied deliberately misleading the commission on other issues over which she said she was inadvertently in error.
It was revealed that:
■Phone records contradicted a claim in her witness statement that she kept into touch throughout the day with her deputy, Assistant Commissioner Kieran Walshe
■She spoke to Police Minister Bob Cameron twice that day. She told the commission last week she had not spoken to him at all.
■There were no text messages or calls sent or received by her phone from 6pm, when she left the fire emergency headquarters, until 8.46pm. This was a critical few hours in which police first learned that up to 40 people had been killed in the fires.
Ms Nixon’s phone records, received by the commission yesterday, showed no calls between herself and Mr Walshe that day until a conference call at 8.46pm to discuss a media conference at which he would confirm several deaths.
Under scathing cross-examination by Rachel Doyle, SC, Ms Nixon said: “I didn’t intend to mislead anybody.
“I didn’t do a good enough job in preparing this statement [to the commission] and I have to say I have taken a very significant amount of heat since then for that. But that doesn’t mean that I was trying to be misleading . . . It just means I should have paid more attention.”
Ms Nixon said errors regarding Mr Walshe resulted from her just assuming she had spoken to him: “That had been my practice [during previous fires] to pick up the phone . . . I assumed, until you showed me the records, that that had been the case.”
Ms Nixon said it had been difficult to write her statement to the commission as she had never written an account of her movements that day, and she was trying to recall from memory matters now 14 months old.
Ms Nixon admitted that she received no information at all about the fires between 6pm and 8.45pm. This was despite the fact that the assistant commissioner at emergency headquarters, Steve Fontana, had received information at 8.30pm and 8.43pm that there were credible reports of up to 40 deaths at Narbethong, Arthur’s Creek, and Yarra Glen.
Ms Nixon said she had not told Mr Cameron, Mr Walshe or Mr Fontana that she was going out for dinner.
Ms Doyle said: “When you did a media interview on 3AW last week, you told Mr Mitchell that you had dinner for an hour and ‘people knew where I was’. Who knew where you were?”
Ms Nixon: “I certainly knew where I was and I didn’t see any point in telling anybody. What I mean by that was . . . they knew that they could contact me.”
Ms Doyle: “When you heard nothing, the whole time you were out at dinner, did you assume that no news is good news?”
Ms Nixon: “No, I didn’t.”
Ms Doyle repeatedly suggested to Ms Nixon that she “deliberately omitted” reference to the meal being at a pub because “you knew that to do otherwise would reveal you were not able to monitor the situation, as your statement suggests”.
Ms Nixon replied repeatedly that she had put good people and good processes in place. “It was not my job to swoop in and take control. When you have good people who are more skilled in emergency management than I am you let those people do the job.” But she admitted that, in hindsight, she should have stayed at headquarters longer. “That would have given comfort to a great many people.”
She admitted she should not have said in her statement that she treated Black Saturday as “an active working day” after receiving a text message from Mr Fontana at 6am.
Asked how that description fitted with having two private appointments that day, she said: “When I look back on that statement, that language is probably not appropriate.”
But Ms Nixon fiercely denied that she had her telephone off for the three hours in which she was not contacted: “The idea that I would have turned my phone off when I knew it was a difficult situation and I knew people might need me to do something . . . I find abhorrent.”
Former premier Jeff Kennett said Ms Nixon’s should be sacked “more so than ever” for betraying trust of the public and deserting her post. And Opposition leader Ted Baillieu said yesterday’s evidence confirmed her position was untenable.
But Mr Brumby said: “Christine has admitted she made mistakes on Black Saturday. She has corrected the record on her evidence.
“I believe she is the best person to continue the work she has begun rebuilding with the bushfire affected communities.”
NIXON’S BLACK SATURDAY
6am Text from assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana saying Bunyip fire had broken containment lines.
9.30-11am Personal appointment.
11am Husband drives her to state emergency response centre, where she is briefed on fires.
12 noon AC Fontana says he briefed Nixon in person. Nixon can’t remember if it was by phone or in person; her statement says it was by phone at 11.40am.
12.20 Nixon is contacted by Superintendent Rod Collins, who is in emergency headquarters and they talk for 3 minutes 29 seconds.
12.26pm Call from AC Fontana (although both in the same building at the emergency centre).
12.54pm Several texts from AC Fontana over the next hour, ending at 1.43pm.
Nixon last week said she received no updates on the fires while she was in her office from 1.30 to 3pm.
3.34pm Phone call from ‘Unknown’: Nixon said this was a retired deputy commissioner in the NSW police.
4pm Minister Bob Cameron calls her. Nixon had no recollection of this when she gave evidence last week. She said they had not called each other at all that day.
Around 5pm Nixon is briefed by fire chiefs Russell Rees and Ewan Waller.
5.55pm Nixon calls Cameron.
There is no more activity on her phone for three hours, until 9pm.
By 8.40pm AC Fontana knew deaths would number at least 40.
6pm AC Fontana drops Nixon off in North Melbourne.
7pm-8.20pm Dinner with husband, her personal assistant and AC Bernice Masterson at the Metropolitan Hotel, North Melbourne. Drank a soda, lime and bitters.
8.46pm Nixon receives conference call from police Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe, AC Fontana and media adviser Nicole McKechnie lasting 8 minutes 22 seconds.
9.30pm DC Kieran Walshe gives media conference about 14 deaths.
9.43pm Nixon receives text from Fontana.
9.53pm Nixon calls Cameron about press conference.
Receives text from NSW police agreeing to a request she made for help with disaster victim identification.
10.47pm Nixon texts AC Fontana to tell him NSW would help with victim identification.
10.48pm Fontana calls her.
Call from Victoria Police HQ 11.52pm Another text from Fontana.
11.54pm Nixon texts her driver to make arrangements to visit fireaffected areas the next day.
Ms Nixon said there was no contact between herself and Premier John Brumby.
The only contact she had with DC Walshe, her deputy, regarding emergencies, was in the conference call with the media adviser.
In her statement last week she said she spoke to him throughout the day.

NEW bushfire warnings telling people to take shelter, while also warning that their home may not save them, may cause confusion, the Bushfire Royal Commission heard yesterday.
“This warning appears to contain very bad advice,” said counsel assisting the commission, Rachel Doyle, SC. She suggested it might cause panic if people were told, “You must seek shelter but it is both too late to leave and your home is unlikely to help.”
“I think in a fire that’s the situation that may exist,” replied Tony Duckmanton, manager of learning systems with the Country Fire Authority.
“It is describing what? Certain death?” asked Ms Doyle.
“No, it’s saying it could be too late to leave,” Mr Duckmanton said.
“And bad news to stay?” Ms Doyle said.
“It could be,” said Mr Duckmanton.
He said the responsibility for deciding whether to relocate remained with residents, but it would be possible for an incident controller issuing public warnings to include advice on relocation or where to find a Neighbourhood Safer Place (NSP).
But Ms Doyle was also critical of signs to be placed outside designated safer places.
The signs warn that safety and survival are not guaranteed, that many private houses might offer better shelter, that travelling when there is a bushfire can be extremely dangerous, that NSPs have limited capacity and that there is no guarantee the CFA will be there.
Ms Doyle said: “So the person who is reading that might [think], ‘I wonder if I should have stayed or if I should go back because it’s telling me in part that my own home might be safer?’ Are you able to resolve this ‘tension’, to put it mildly?”
Mr Duckmanton said, “No, I’m not.”
Commissioner Ron McLeod also questioned other advice: “A message like ‘Leave now only if the path is clear’ might give the author some comfort but it doesn’t give much comfort to the receiver . . . How does one ascertain whether the path is clear?
“The only way one can do that, particularly if people are unfamiliar with the area, is to have some indication of which roads are closed definitely or which roads are known to continue to be safe as exit roads.”
Mr Duckmanton replied: “If we know that information we certainly provide it.” But he said even the best road can be suddenly rendered unusable.
The commission also heard of many improvements to the wording of warnings, which will now clearly state the size and location of a fire, whether it is under control, how far it is spotting, and at what time and with what ferocity it is expected to hit towns.
The CFA and Department of Sustainability and Environment now share a website and the new system sends warnings to other public sources such as the ABC and Victorian Bushfire Information Line.

THE CFA failed to prepare adequately for Black Saturday, which left inexperienced officers managing large, deadly fires, the Bushfires Royal Commission heard yesterday.
‘‘We went into the 7th [of February 2009] without people in the right places at the right time,’’ said Rachel Doyle, SC, counsel assisting the commission.
She said many incident control centres did not have enough staff at the beginning of the day and, in particular, lacked level-three incident controllers who were qualified to manage complex fires. Managers had known beforehand that it would not be possible to staff all control centres fully but did not mention it to their supervisors or request more resources, she said.
Senior staff were moved around the state to fill those roles after fires started. But this was undesirable in the case of severe, fast-moving fires in which the first hour was crucial, she said.
The commission had earlier heard that several fires, including the Kilmore East blaze that killed 119 people, were managed for several hours by underqualified staff who lacked leadership experience.
Failures to tell firefighters of wind changes, or to warn the public of an approaching blaze, were ‘‘at least in part due to the challenges facing relatively inexperienced incident controllers’’, according to a written submission by lawyers assisting the commission.
The CFA was also accused of having inadequate training and promotion procedures for level-three controllers, with ‘‘the potential for both a well-performing candidate to be missed, or a poorly performing candidate to be endorsed’’, according to the submission. It said there was no performance review process for level-three controllers.
The submission said an incident controller for the Churchill fire, Peter Lockwood, was only supposed to operate at level three if he was being mentored, but he did not have a mentor on February 7.
Three burnovers — where crews are flashed over by fire — occurred during the Churchill fire, and CFA inquiries concluded that in each case a warning sent to crews contained incorrect information about the timing of a wind change, exposing crews to risk.
Mr Lockwood was not told of those findings and was fully endorsed as a level-three controller after February 7, the submission said.
Counsel assisting Peter Rozen said firefighting volunteers should be considered for positions on incident management teams and offered better training to allow them to participate.
The commission had heard in earlier evidence that volunteers felt sidelined by career officers, despite many having great depth of experience. They were also frustrated at a lack of consultation.
Ms Doyle said the CFA had failed to implement a coroner’s recommendation, made after the Linton disaster in which five volunteer firefighters died in 1998, to set up a mentoring program for new firefighters.
Neil Clelland, SC, for the state of Victoria, said the government agreed with nearly all the recommendations of counsel assisting on these issues, but did not believe a level-three controller should be present in every control centre from early in the morning on an extreme or catastrophic day.
‘‘[It] may simply result in mandatory levels that are currently unachievable,’’ he said.

VICTORIA will have more days of catastrophic bushfire loss unless its ageing electricity system gets an urgent multibillion-dollar overhaul to prevent it starting fires, the Bushfires Royal Commission heard yesterday.
Senior counsel assisting the commission, Jack Rush, QC, called for the upgrade and criticised the state’s electricity safety regulator as weak, saying it had surrendered its authority over power companies.
Jonathan Beach, QC, for power company SP AusNet, said the suggested upgrades would cost up to $7.5 billion in its distribution area alone and could force consumers to pay 20 per cent more on their power bills every year for 20 years.
Mr Rush said that without substantial reform “we will continue on days of signifi-cant fire risk to have the sort of losses that we sustained on February 7”.
Mr Rush said the ageing overhead powerline network set up in rural areas in the 1950s should be “done away with” over the next 10 years and replaced by aerial bundling of wires, or by wires being put underground. “Aerial bundling technology pretty much will eliminate bushfire risk . . . Undergrounding would reduce bushfire risk and reduce maintenance and mean longer life.”
Five of the biggest fires on Black Saturday, including the Kilmore East fire that killed 119 people, were allegedly started by electrical lines or fittings. In the Kilmore East fire, investigators reported that a line broke and fell to the ground, producing sparks that ignited dry vegetation.
Mr Rush said a 2004 study found the Powercor network alone had 11,374 route kilometres of conductor (electrical lines) aged between 55 and 64 years, and 10,318 kilometres aged between 65 and 74 years.
Mr Rush said the commissioners should recommend that:
■Parts be replaced when they get old, rather than waiting until they break or look worn. “At the moment the components are not replaced until it’s recognised by inspectors that they have failed or have deteriorated . . . Evidence was given that if the aircraft industry worked on that basis, we would have aircraft falling out of the sky.”
■Inspections of lines be done every three years, as was the case under the public-owned State Electricity Commission before privatisation, instead of every five. “(This) would result in a 70 per cent reduction in the number of in-service failures.”
■The government change regulations to ensure power companies had new obligations to upgrade systems.
■Devices that restore high-voltage power to faulty lines be disabled for the whole fire season on one kind of line, and modified to work only once on another kind of line, to avoid them triggering fires.
Mr Rush was scathing of Energy Safe Victoria, which regulates safety in the power, gas and pipeline industries, saying it had “in effect surrendered its position of authority in the regulatory relationship”. He said its “position of weakness” was made clear by the way power companies dismissed its criticisms.
An audit of Powercor’s bushfire mitigation plan for 2008 had concluded that “the majority of rusty ties and conductors were not being detected in the asset inspection process. When that conclusion was communicated by ESV to Powercor, Powercor simply rejected it”.
Mr Rush also accused ESV of not having the expertise “to meet the distribution companies on an equal footing”. “It is necessary to reform ESV so that it is properly funded so that it is able to undertake a proactive role.”
He said replacing ageing infrastructure would be expensive but that the cost of Black Saturday probably extended to billions of dollars.
Mr Beach, for SP AusNet, said putting wires underground would cost $7.5 billion for the SP Ausnet network alone. “You would be looking at an annual price rise of 20 per cent per annum for the next 20 years.”
Powercor’s submission said that disabling or limiting the devices that restored power to faulty lines would mean long periods without power for affected people in country Victoria.
Energy Minister Peter Batchelor said the government recognised the need for changes to the network to reduce bushfire risk. “We have committed to introduce new legislation to increase the powers available to Electricity Safe Victoria to enhance its capabilities and capacity to regulate the electricity industry,” he said.
“We have convened a national workshop in April 2010 with relevant stakeholders . . . to consider options for reducing fire risk from ageing electricity assets.”
VICTORIAN BUSHFIRES SPARKED BY ELECTRICITY FAULTS
Black Saturday 2009: Allegedly five of 11 major fires
Ash Wednesday, 1983: Four of eight major fires
April 1980: Fire at Pigeon Ponds, near Balmoral
February 12, 1977: Nine of 16 fires
January 1969: Fires in northeastern Victoria
121 — or 70 per cent — of the 173 deaths on Black Saturday were caused by the failure of electricity assets, according to lawyers representing 1100 people in class actions against power companies.
SOURCES: Submission yesterday to the Bushfires Royal Commission by Jack Rush, QC; claims made in earlier hearings by Tim Tobin, SC; and the 2008 report of a
Legislative Council inquiry on the impact of public land management practices on bushfires.

KINGLAKE park rangers denied that they had been panicked into conducting an unauthorised backburn just before fire struck on Black Saturday, and denied they had disagreed over what to do, the Bushfires Royal Commission heard yesterday.
Local resident Craig Draper, of Pine Ridge Road, said he thought the last-minute burn added to the ferocity of the fire attack on his street. It is believed 21 people died in Pine Ridge Road, including five children.
“This backburn has caused the oxygen in the air to be sucked out and, as a result, has drawn the firefront back on us at Pine Ridge Road,” he said in a witness statement.
But this was disputed by two fire investigators, who concluded that the backburn did not affect fire in the street.
Mr Draper, a trained CFA firefighter, said he was disbelieving when he heard of the backburn, which was ordered by acting chief ranger Tony Fitzgerald at around 4.30pm.
He told his informant: “You have got to be kidding. They don’t want to do that on that type of day . . . I asked a few people who worked in Melbourne Water and they said: ‘Everything’s hush-hush and yes, they did do it’.”
Mr Draper also claimed that he spoke to Kinglake ranger Natalie Brida shortly after the fires and that “Natalie stated that she didn’t agree with the decision made by Fitzgerald”. Asked if he was certain that conversation had occurred, he said: “Yes, I am.”
Ms Brida told the hearing she did not have such a conversation, that rangers had not panicked over the approaching fire, and that the decision to start the backburn had been unanimous.
Mr Fitzgerald said he decided on the backburn after having seen three large spot fires in the area.
It was “a last-ditch effort” to burn fuel in the hope that fire would be less intense if it had less material to burn.
Asked why he had not just evacuated himself and his crew, he replied: “I am a part of that community. I have lived there for 14 years.
“Having knocked on their doors, I could see that people were in their houses. I used to walk down Rae Street every morning to the office and in the bus shelter would be all the kids from Pine Ridge Road. That’s why.”
But he did not expect it to be effective: “I don’t think it had a hope of doing anything . . . It was a hopeless situation, hopeless, but it was all I could think of to do.”
He said there was no time to ask for authorisation from the fire’s incident controller. He had also been told by his supervisor earlier that while the Kilmore Incident Control Centre was managing the fire, “They aren’t functioning very well — you are on your own.”
A separate large fire struck the area within minutes of the backburn being lit.
Mr Fitzgerald and his seven crew evacuated, but his vehicle caught alight and the tyres melted. He drove on the rims of two wheels.
CSIRO bushfire analyst Dr Andrew Sullivan said two spot fires had been started by the backburn and one had been sighted by Pine Ridge Road residents, “but whether that fire impacted upon houses, I don’t know”.
In his statement, he concluded that a large fire from the north was the probable cause of flames that destroyed houses in the upper part of Pine Ridge Road: “This section of fire was in no way affected by the presence of the Parks [Victoria] burn.”
A second fire investigator, Francis Crowe of the CFA, also found no reason to believe the backburn had affected the street.

MELBOURNE

THE Country Fire Authority expected Black Saturday to be the worst fire day in living memory, with great risk to firefighters, but appointed no safety officers to the teams managing the deadliest blazes, the Bushfires Royal Commission heard yesterday.
The inquiry was also told that managers whose incorrect information had caused a fire-ground crew to suffer a “burnover” had not been given feedback about their error despite an internal inquiry on the incident.
Safety officers, charged with firefighters’ well-being, had been mandatory since 2003 and 200 had been trained, but only two were assigned to level-3 fires that day. The Murrindindi, Kilmore East, Churchill, Bendigo and Beechworth control centres had no safety officer, senior counsel Jack Rush, QC, told the hearing.
Department of Sustainability and Environment spokesman Anthony Edgar said he could not explain why no safety controllers had been appointed to Murrindindi and Beechworth.
CFA deputy chief officer Gregory Esnouf admitted Black Saturday was expected to be high-risk in terms of firefighter safety but said many safety officers were assigned to roles considered higher priority. He was “disappointed” that the CFA had not delivered what it promised in this regard.
Commissioner Ron McLeod told him that given the predicted severity of fire conditions that day: “You should be more than disappointed, I suggest. You should be deeply concerned.”
Mr McLeod asked if there was a serious cultural issue with the CFA’s failure to prioritise safety, with possible parallels between the failure to appoint safety officers to look after firefighters and previously reported failures to prioritise public safety by issuing community warnings.
Mr Esnouf said the two problems had different causes but the CFA was not consistent about use of safety officers. Resources were stretched on Black Saturday but there had probably been other instances of it not happening, he said.
Mr Esnouf admitted the CFA’s internal reviews had not discovered the failure to appoint safety officers on Black Saturday. This was realised only after the royal commission raised the issue, he said.
It previously has been claimed that 19 burnovers were reported that day, six of them involving crews from the DSE.
Mr Esnouf said a “near-miss” investigation was held into one burnover — being flashed over by fire — involving the Glengarry West Tanker No. 1 at the Churchill fire. The crew had received a Red Flag Warning for a dangerous wind change at 7pm, which arrived at 6pm. South-westerly wind changes turn the flank of a fire into the new head and on to firefighters. Five CFA volunteers were killed by this at Linton in 1998.
Asked whether the staff of the relevant incident management team (IMT) had seen the Glengarry tanker burnover report, Mr Esnouf said near-miss inquiries concentrated on the actions of the crew under threat.
“We were focusing very much at the crew level. We didn’t pick up that this learning needed to be put back to the IMT,” he said.
He agreed with Mr Rush that if inquiries were to improve performance, people involved had to be informed of their findings.