Sunday, February 03, 2019

Delayed response to fire emergency

The afterrmath of a bushfire is never pleasant but hopefully we will get some answers about the delay in responding to emergency calls for the Grantville fire, if an independent inquiry is conducted. Two police officers and three CFA incident controllers came to the farm today at the start of their investigation. The farm survived unscathed by the wildfire at Grantville on Friday. Anne rang 000 at 11.34 when she noticed a wisp of smoke in the bush at Glen Forbes. She was told that the fire had already been reported - so we assumed that fire crews would be on the scene within minutes. But no. Instead of dealing with a small scrub fire, it was allowed to rage unchecked while the local brigade tried to find a way to the fire even though they were fully aware that a fire track had been constructed for the purpose of accessing a fire within the Grantville Nature Conservation Reserve. The delayed action resulted in a major fire which required additional resources from other brigades, helicopters and water bombers. We expect a full investigation to determine the cause of the delayed response and changes to the system to prevent it happening again but there will probably be just q cursory review by a bureaucrat. More details and pictures are on the farm facebook page.