State not ready for fires: Greens

TASMANIA is even less well prepared for catastrophic bushfires this fire season than last and was less likely to receive interstate support in a crisis, the Greens say.

As bushfires rage in New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia and Tasmanian firefighters travel interstate to help out, Greens police, fire and emergency management spokeswoman Rosalie Woodruff sounded a warning.

“The Government has 80 TFS remote area teams that are grounded now and only 12 of those will be trained and ready to go on the first of December,” she said.

“That is an inexcusable level of incompetency and a failure to prioritise for this summer’s staffing.

“So what we have is an expectation that we may not be able to get support from outside this summer when fires happen across Tasmania.

“And what we have is even fewer remote area firefighters, Tasmanians who are trained and ready to go, than we did last summer.”

Ms Woodruff said the Greens were also concerned about the slow progress by the Government in implementing the recommendations of two recent reports into bushfires responses.

Party leader Cassy O’Connor said the Greens would be asking questions of the Government about bushfire preparedness in Parliament this week.

“This fire season in Tasmania has already arrived,’’ Ms O’Connor said.

“We’re dealing with a Government that has sat on recommendations from an independent report, that has refused to answer in any detail questions about the level of resourcing that’s available for us in Tasmania this bushfire season.”