NINE RECOMMENDATIONS POINT WAY

THE Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council’s Independent Operational Review into the summer’s bushfires made a number of recommendations about fire management in Tasmania. TFS, PWS and STT initiate a discussion among their Australasian peers about good practice around managing new fire starts in remote terrain, to include issues around identification, predictive analysis, risk management and suppression activities.The outcome should be a document which allows for benchmarking to accepted good practice across Australasia, from which Tasmanian fire agencies can develop protocols against which the management of future events can be tested. TFS should pursue the creation of a cadre of volunteer remote area firefighters. In doing so the TFS should not consider itself limited to upskilling of current volunteer brigade members, but should carry out a cost benefit analysis of creating one or more remote area firefighting units based in urban areas, in order to tap into the potential of those members of the urban-based Tasmanian community who may have advanced knowledge and skills relating to navigation and survival in wilderness areas. TFS should initiate a policy review (seeking support from government as appropriate) to clearly identify what body or agency is responsible for planning, carrying out and enforcing fuel management on private property at a township level. If current arrangements are unclear or ineffective, TFS should request government to consider making this a statutory responsibility of TFS and provide any additional funding required to support this function. TFS, PWS and STT should work with government and each other to continue to pursue a whole-ofstate fuel management and burning program that encompasses all land tenures, meets the range of outcomes required by the state (township protection, risk reduction and landscape-scale burns) and is inclusive of private landholders and local communities as well as all fire agencies. TFS, PWS and STT agree an updated version of the Interagency Fire Management Protocol which maintains the principle that there will be one statewide point of command for major unwanted fires burning in the State of Tasmania, explicitly recognises the right of each of TFS, PWS and STT to have their objectives prioritised in incident action planning and adequate resources applied to