Bushfire errors 'not individuals' fault'

There should be no finger-pointing or blaming of individuals who did not follow
strict guidelines as they fought the Black Saturday fires, the royal commission into
the February 2009 bushfires has been told.
Allan Myers QC, for the state government, on Tuesday defended incident controller
Peter Lockwood who had only a level 2 qualification but was in charge of the
Churchill fire in Gippsland.
Counsel assisting the commission, Rachael Doyle, said Mr Lockwood should have been
supervised by a mentor, but one was never appointed.
"The job was foisted upon him and he can't be criticised for finding himself in that
position," she said.
"Mr Lockwood was tapped on the shoulder that day and, we say, put in a situation
where his relative inexperience must be taken to be one of the reasons, and probably
the significant reason, why his team's management of this fire failed in a number of
significant respects."
She said Mr Lockwood had never prepared an instant action plan and there was no
"over-arching plan or direction" from the incident control management team in
Traralgon.
She said another incident controller - Laurie Jeremiah who had level three
qualifications - was "ready and waiting".
Mr Myers rejected claims that Mr Lockwood didn't do a good job, "because he did".
"We also repudiate suggestions he should not have been appointed incident
controller," Mr Myers said.
"He was well up to the job, and a sensible decision was made."
Victorian Premier John Brumby backed Mr Myers and said the commission should not be
reaching conclusions about how individuals performed in the fire.
"The reason we say that, essentially, is that it is too early to draw those
conclusions, and secondly there is no doubt that mistakes were made on Black
Saturday - that is self-evident," Mr Brumby told reporters on Tuesday.
"But those mistakes weren't made because people in the incident control centres
weren't trying, weren't doing their best to protect and save lives - they were.
"All we are saying to the commission is they shouldn't rush to judgment. They have
got until July. They should look at these things very carefully indeed."
The commission heard that the townships of Callignee, Callignee North and Callignee
South - seven kilometres east of Churchill - did not receive an urgent warning until
8pm on February 7 and by that time the communities had "well and truly been
impacted".
Ms Doyle said four people died in Callignee that day, and three of those deaths
could be put down as "late-evacuation deaths".
In total, 11 perished in the Churchill fire and 247 homes were lost.
The commission also heard that firefighters at Marysville on Black Saturday would
have been more useful warning people to head to the sanctuary of the town's football
oval rather than trying to fight the fire.
Counsel assisting the commission Peter Rozen said people who lived metres from where
a fire crew was carrying out a backburn in Kings Road were among the 34 people who
died in the February 7 inferno.
"Anyone who made it to the oval was unharmed," Mr Rozen said.
"Instead, 34 people died in Marysville on February 7, including a number of people
in Kings Road, metres from the backburn where fire crews had been situated."
The hearing before commissioner Bernard Teague is continuing.