Despite mistakes, we won out

THE wisdom of hindsight and the commentary of armchair experts are commodities that are not much use in the heat of a firefight.

The findings of the AFAC Review are welcome and the Government would do well to enact the recommendations as quickly as it can in order to minimise the impact of the next bushfire crisis.

But where shortcomings have been found, they should be treated as lessons and not criticisms.

We should not forget the other lessons we all learned during our difficult summer.

We learned, again, how manian state firefighting capacity, it will never be large enough to deal with a season like 2018-19,” it said.

Among its findings, the report said the Gell River fire, which eventually burned 35,000ha, “could have been handled differently” with the benefit of hindsight.

However, it stressed that emergency services acted appropriately based on the information and resources they had at the time.

“It was believed at one point that the Gell River fire was out,” the report said.

“This proved not to be the case, and is further confirmation (if any were needed) that it can be hard to detect and monitor fire burning in organic soils in wilderness areas.

“Crews withdrew from the fireline at Gell River on 31 December 2018, on the understanding that the fire was inactive and did not pose a threat.

“This unfortunately proved not to be so, with the fire later burning freely to the south.”

The report said that the firefight was hampered by the unavailability of aerial intelligence gathering aircraft at the magnificent our emergency services are, how paid staff and volunteers from a handful of agencies can be equal to the most impossible of challenges. To them go our thanks. We learned that despite the magnitude of the crisis, that somehow with supreme effort any loss of life can be avoided and just six houses lost.

We learned that when danger is close, help is at hand from other states and overseas.

And we learned how well the Tasmanian community pulls together in a crisis.

From the welcome respite of evacuation centres, to the friends who took in those displaced, to the neighbours who looked out for each other, it was one of the state’s finest of community responses. Let’s hope this summer requires no repeat.