Australia: Time running out to avoid more carnage

Victoria is rushing to implement safety measures before bushfire season. Photo / Getty Images

CANBERRA - Loaded with fuel, parched by an apparently never-ending drought and still traumatised by the February fires that took 173 lives, Victoria has 10 weeks to prepare for what authorities fear may be an even worse summer ahead.

This week, the royal commission into the fires that obliterated towns and seared more than 400,000ha of the state handed Premier John Brumby a damning appraisal of flawed policies and management, and a long list of recommendations.

The commission made no bones about its sense of urgency. Its interim report conceded that it may not be possible to draw up the comprehensive package needed to fully brace Victoria, but the state needed to do everything in its power to adopt whatever recommendations it could.

"In some areas the lessons [from February] are so compelling that it would be unfortunate if the benefits of these changes are not made available ... in the forthcoming bushfire season," it said.

Brumby yesterday acknowledged the threat, releasing a list of 52 towns considered most at risk as meteorologists warn yet again of a dry, hot and dangerous summer ahead.

"All of the agencies and all of the incident control centres are all geared up now for what will potentially be a fire season more dangerous than we've had in the past," he said.

Many of the endangered towns are surrounded by bushland, or sit on coastline that attracts vast numbers of holidaymakers to centres that Brumby said had "only one road in, and one road out".

Some measures are already being taken - new township protection plans, more controlled burns and roadside burning, and moves to improve warnings and create last-resort havens for people trapped by flames.

People will be told it is safer to flee than to try to stay and fight the flames.

But many of the recommendations will not be in place for summer. Country Fire Authority chief Russel Rees will remain at the helm despite the criticism of the royal commission, and major changes to fire management are unlikely to be implemented. The commission's final conclusions will be presented in the middle of next year.

The interim report presents a terrifying picture of what may face the state if the weather follows similar patterns to last February.

This will be the 13th year of a drought that last summer pushed one of the most severe heatwaves in recorded history across the state, that by 11am on February 7 had already driven temperatures to 40C.

Powerful winds, gusting to 115 km/h, howled across unnaturally dry bushland and forests that in some areas held up to 50 tonnes of fuel per hectare.

As fires broke out, the wind switched from north to south, pumping smoke into developing thunderstorms that hurled lightning to the ground and generated heat believed to have doubled the intensity of the flames.

When they came, the fronts burned in a "chaotic series of surging fires", throwing embers ahead in a leapfrogging, roaring charge that swept through towns and countryside at 10km/h, hiding their fronts in smoke that firefighters could not penetrate.

John O'Neill, who stayed to defend his Steels Creek home, told the commission: "Burning embers slapped into our windows and the rest of the house. "It was like being inside a washing machine on spin cycle, full of fire and embers."

www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au