Coroner calls for overhaul of firefighting in Back Summer report

From the outset, the coroner made clear this inquiry wasn’t about laying blame or placing liability on any organization. But for the victims of the Black Summer bushfires, it’s left with them with no sense of comfort and no faith the mistakes won’t happen again. The 2019-2020 bushfires were one of the most catastrophic on record, claiming 25 lives, including 75 fighters, and burning through five and a half million hectares of land. The coroner handed down 28. Recommendations 23 directed at the Rural Fire Service. Many related to the need for more training for water bombing pilots and better communication. Three US firefighters died when their large air tanker crashed in the Snowy Mountains in January 2020. People who were on the ground fighting for their lives and their homes say the issue was decisions coming out of a centralised command and local knowledge not being listened to. The real problem is. A top heavy bureaucratic RFS, not volunteers. We respect them. The bureaucracy administering from the lovely air conditioned office strategies on firefighting are never done from state operations, they’re always done locally. The coroner also found more work needs to be done to prepare communities for the ongoing and intensifying risk of climate change. Locals feel anger. This inquiry took two years and has offered them very little resolution, nothing in the way of compensation. They feel they haven’t been listened to and want an independent body to be created to oversee disasters. To analyze incidents, to enforce change and ensure the tragedy that was Black Summer bushfires never happens again.