UN celebrates disaster preparedness of Australian capital city

scorpio63 said :

The A.C.T. Government’s ‘Strategic Management Plan’ should include:
(i) Common sense – view the BOM site regularly particularly when Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide are enduring 100kmh winds during January, Feb and March a week before the A.C.T. Govt and/or The Rural Fire Services undertake burn-offs in Namadji or any paddocks in or around the A.C.T.
(ii) Set up a siren service at assigned schools in each suburb for an evacuation indicator or to warn people that the fire is approaching or has reached their suburb.
(ii) Purchase one or two fire trucks (Hinos or Isuzus) left at ACTEWAGL sites per two suburbs during summer periods – ie second hand $45,000 each, its the least the ACT Govt can do after my son suffered an asthma attack the day of the firestorm.
(iv) Put more Taxpayer funds into purchasing another firebomber.

What are you basing this on, the Acme Guide to Firefighting?

The fact you say buy “trucks” and either ‘Hinos or Isuzus’ just shows you know stuff all about what you’re talking about, as does suggesting purchasing second hand gear (which costs more to maintain and won’t offer modern crew protection of foam systems).

The brands you mention are merely the chassis, absolutely meaningless. It’s what’s on top that matters and that is now usually custom designed for the ACT ESA, built by folks like Moore.
There’s no such thing as a ‘truck’, you’ve got different grades and different types. Are you saying buy some medium pumpers like the NSW RFS uses for regional structural protection but need hydrants, or light tankers that don’t need a water source and can go beyond the urban interface?

And I don’t know what 2 per suburb is going to do, it takes min 2 pumpers per structural fire in the ACT, so even on your numbers I don’t see it negating what happened in 2003.

Just silly making nutty suggestions with not even a basic understanding.

The siren though has to take the cake for dumb suggestions. Sirens alone do not warn or advise people, they just panic people.

What the ACT should do is ensure future urban fire fighting equipment is better suited to urban interface fires. There was some talk of retrofitting CAFS to the existing urban pumpers but it would have had some limitations. Instead, they invested in dedicated CAFS vehicles, which have problems with vehicle size and crew costs.

Second, and something that the ACT and other states should have had long ago, is adjusting planning regulations so buildings in fire danger areas like the urban interface or rural settlements are constructed to and have feature to protect from and respond to fire.

The A.C.T. Government’s ‘Strategic Management Plan’ should include:
(i) Common sense – view the BOM site regularly particularly when Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide are enduring 100kmh winds during January, Feb and March a week before the A.C.T. Govt and/or The Rural Fire Services undertake burn-offs in Namadji or any paddocks in or around the A.C.T.
(ii) Set up a siren service at assigned schools in each suburb for an evacuation indicator or to warn people that the fire is approaching or has reached their suburb.
(ii) Purchase one or two fire trucks (Hinos or Isuzus) left at ACTEWAGL sites per two suburbs during summer periods – ie second hand $45,000 each, its the least the ACT Govt can do after my son suffered an asthma attack the day of the firestorm.
(iv) Put more Taxpayer funds into purchasing another firebomber.

I’m sure that things like the bushfire recovery operation in 2003 were good, and I’d like to think that lessons were learned. However, what stands out for most people are the things that went wrong — lack of information, confusing information, no ‘single point of truth’,, lack of coordination between jurisdictions & fire services … I needn’t go on. If we are now such an international role model for disaster risk management, could we please be told exactly how the potential for a repeat disaster is being ‘managed’, especially in terms of fuel load and fire-fighting resources?

One of the biggest issues I see is the lack of decisiveness from the public. Rather than waiting around to be told what to do, come up with a sensible plan yourself and do it.