http://www.theage.com.au/national/angry-survivors-blame-council-green-policy-20090211-83p0.html

ANGRY residents last night accused local authorities of contributing to the bushfire toll by failing to let residents chop down trees and clear up bushland that posed a fire risk.

During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne's northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council's help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down," he said.

"We wanted trees cut down on the side of the road … and you can't even cut the grass for God's sake."

Later, the meeting was cut short when Mr Spooner's father, Dennis, collapsed in his chair and an ambulance had to be called. Despite losing his wife and son and everything he owned, a friend later said he had not stopped or slept since the weekend.

Another resident said she had asked the council four times to tend to out-of-control growth on public land near her home, but her pleas had been ignored.

There was widespread applause when Nillumbik Mayor Bo Bendtsen said changes were likely to be made about the council's policy surrounding native vegetation.

But his response was not good enough for Mr Spooner: "It's too late now mate. We've lost families, we've lost people."

More than 500 people spilled out of the small hall during the meeting, at which the CFA, Victoria Police, Department of Human Services and Telstra provided updates.

Many expressed anger that police road blocks were stopping them from reaching survivors trapped in fire-ravaged areas with no water, power or other basic needs. One man present spoke of counselling a woman whose two children had been killed and whose grief had been compounded by not knowing where they were because the area had been declared a crime scene and she had not been allowed to return.

Most of those present were tired, grieving the loss of relatives and friends and with little more than the smoke-coated clothes on their backs. Some were still showing symptoms of shock after experiencing the worst natural disaster in the nation's history.

Scattered around the hall and outside were trestle tables with clothing sorted in neat piles, toiletries, food and bottled water. On the floor were dozens of pairs of shoes. There was also a section dedicated to baby clothes and another for children's toys.

Of all the speakers who addressed the meeting, it was Arthurs Creek CFA Captain David McGahy who got the most rousing reception.

Choking back tears he told them: "I'm so terribly sorry. We desperately wanted to protect you but we couldn't.

"In the cold analysis of light, it wouldn't have mattered if we'd have had 200 units here, all that would have happened is we would have ended up with a whole lot of dead firefighters. I've been at this game for about 40 years and I haven't experienced anything like that, not even remotely like it."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25038717-5018722,00.html

THE shire council covering some of the areas hit hardest by the bushfires was warned five years ago that its policy of encouraging people to grow trees near their homes to give the appearance of a forest would lead to disaster.

One of Australia's leading bushfire experts, Rod Incoll, warned Nillumbik Shire Council in a 2003 report that it risked devastation if it went ahead with changes to planning laws proposed by green groups that restricted the removal of vegetation.

Mr Incoll, the Victorian fire chief from 1990 to 1996, and David Packham, a former CSIRO bushfire scientist and academic who also produced a report on the issue, argued against the regulations, which actively encouraged the builders of new homes to plant trees around the houses for aesthetic reasons.

Mr Incoll told The Australian yesterday the proposed planning rules were "foolhardy and dangerous and ought not to be proceeded with".

"But they were nevertheless instituted," he said. "That is certainly one of the things that people will be looking at as an aftermath of this tragic event."

Mr Packham, now an honorary senior research fellow at Monash University's school of geography and environmental science, wrote in his report, after inspecting the Kinglake to Heidelberg Road: "The mix of fuel, unsafe roadsides and embedded houses, some with zero protection and no hope of survival, will all ensure that when a large fire impinges upon the area a major disaster will result."

Mr Incoll said that in 2003, green groups were pushing for changes to planning laws that included restrictions on the removal of vegetation, "and worse still, the requirement for planting vegetation around and almost over houses, as part of any planning permit to build a house in the shire of Nillumbik, so it gave the appearance from the outside of being a forest".

In 2003, the Nillumbik Ratepayers Group asked Mr Incoll to assess the bushfire risk, and the proposed planning rules.

Council elections were looming, and planning was a major issue. "The green group carried the day in council and the rules came to pass," he said.

Nillumbik Shire councillors, many of whom were last night attending community meetings across the region, declined to comment.

The councillors said it would be inappropriate to speak about a six-year-old report when bushfires were still raging in the area and a royal commission had been announced.

Nillumbik shire calls itself the "green wedge shire". It extends from the Yarra River, on the northwest outskirts of Melbourne to Kinglake National Park. Its villages include Eltham, Hurstbridge, St Andrews, Strathewen and the outskirts of Kinglake.

Mr Incoll and Mr Packham both produced reports for the group. "There was a planning process under the auspices of the state planning authority, and David (Packham) and I gave lengthy evidence," Mr Incoll said.

"They took no notice whatsoever of what we said."

The reports on Nillumbik shire were not the first to warn of the increased bushfire risk associated with failing to manage vegetation around towns.

Victoria's auditor-general warned 17 years ago that a failure to carry out controlled burn-offs placed the state at risk of bushfires. In a 1992 report to parliament, the auditor-general criticised the Department of Conservation and Environment for letting combustible material build up on the forest floor.

"The failure of the department to achieve its planned fuel reduction burns each year has resulted in an increasing accumulation of fuel on forest floors," the report stated. "This makes Victoria's forests and protected lands more susceptible to the occurrence offires."

The report said the department was not burning in "priority1 zones" because they were too close to houses".

"Those areas warranting the highest level of protection to human life, property and public assets had in fact received the lowest level of protection," it said.

The auditor-general's audit found "fuel loads" of combustible material on the forest floors in the range of 20 to 60 tonnes a hectare in the Alexandra and Orbost regions and at Blackwood near Geelong - seven times higher than the department's target.

Mr Incoll said the CSIRO had put out excellent plain-English publications on building safety standards for bushfire-prone areas and that the Country Fire Authority was doing a good job of public education. After the Ash Wednesday fires, fire researcher Andrew Wilson had produced the CSIRO House Survival Meter, a simple calculator to determine the chances of a house surviving a bushfire.

"That, plus the CSIRO information, plus the CFA information, should have and would have been sufficient to prevent most of these unfortunate deaths. It falls down somewhere around the implementation," Mr Incoll said.

He said one of the commonsense rules was not having a tree within a tree height and a half from the house - about 50m.

"People had vegetation growing up in their eves. Vegetation clearance wasn't observed. People didn't understand the threat or believe the threat."

Some areas had very strict controls about the removal of vegetation, "trees being the holy green icon", he said. "Removal of trees is quite an effort in many municipalities and Nillumbik is one of them."

Mr Incoll said he had always worried about the flee-early-or-fight message.

"An untrained person who has never seen a fire like that, and hasn't properly prepared their house, has really got no hope in the teeth of a fire like that if they cop the full force of it," he said, referring to Saturday's fire.

He was hopeful that the royal commission announced on Monday would result in "a collection of all the wisdom that has been gathered over the years".