Great analysis from Jane Cowan on Christine Nixon’s evidence to the commission.
This comment from a commenter called Justin (12 Apr 2010 8:02:29pm) is worth noting:
Gary & Gadget, so its appalling is it? Let me just ask one question - were you in any of the fire affected towns on Feb 7, suddenly facing an inferno, trying to implement a defend plan for which no warnings had been received via internet or radio?
A few things that you both need to understand:
(1) Christine Nixon was not just the Police Commissioner. Under the Emergency Management Act, she had the full control over ALL, thats right ALL emergency services. She left her post.
(2) Russell Rees should no longer be the head of the CFA. His incompetence has been adequately laid to bare during the hearings - failing to source line scans, losing or not seeing predictive mapping, acknowledging during the Commission that he did not know where the fires were in my region (Strathewen, St Andrews), not ensuring that messages were actually posted to the ABC and online;
(3) Bob Cameron, the Emergency Services Minister. He was not even available that day. He was in the country, as was Mr Brumby. He was at his family property in Harcourt.
So, at 6p.m, at the height of the disaster we had the three people capable of declaring a state of emergency, in absentia. Nixon, Cameron and Brumby. They all knew of the dangers in the lead up to that day. They were all over the media. If you want this point reinforced, get a copy of the ABC documentary put together after the fires called “After The Firestorm.” Rees himself talks of the scale of the impending disaster at 3pm and the likely loss of life.
Now, to Ms Nixons “I had to eat.” The first meal I had after Feb 7th was at 4.30am on Sunday 8th. I then had 2 hours sleep before I got back to work on properties next to mine. Not as a CFA member, but as a mere landowner. Thats what we do, we band together. We get things done. We dont abandon. Groups of people got together with their own equipment - excavators, chainsaws, pumps, hoses, slip on units etc - and opened up roads when official requests were ignored. A police friend of mine in Kinglake, who was party to saving a group of approx 40 people in Pheasant Creek didnt eat, sleep or see his family for three days. He didnt abandon his post.
Gary and Gadget, you will perhaps never fully understand what it is to be let done by the authorities on such a grand scale. The disaster plans so practised by the head honchos, failed. And failed catastrophically. The potential scale of this disaster was known at about 1.30pm that day when the line scan was produced - predicting that the fire could reach the Dandenongs. The scale of the disaster, if the wind change had not eventuated two hours earlier than expected, would have seen the deaths of manay many more people than it did.
173. Thats what Nixon, Rees & Cameron need to remember at each ribbon cutting ceremony and fake smile for the cameras.
