Natural Resources Committee: Pinery Bushfires

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. S.W. Key:

That the 116^th report of the committee, entitled Pinery Fire Regional Fact-Finding Trip, be noted.

(Continued from 6 July 2016.)

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (11:49): It certainly seems a long time since I sought leave to continue my remarks, and it is certainly a long time since the Natural Resources Committee undertook its tour of the Pinery fireground and even longer since the fire itself. The irony of all this, of course, is that today, and particularly tomorrow, most of this state and the area affected by that fire is expecting cold, wet and windy conditions, with not insignificant rain forecast and, in fact, gale force winds as well. I trust that the farmers who were affected by the fire can still make good use of the coming rain, although the season has certainly been a wet one and no doubt some of them will have hay on the ground, which could be affected.

I pretty much covered all that I wanted to discuss with regard to the fire itself, in my previous contribution, but I wanted to talk to you today particularly about the importance of communications on a day of extreme events and the reliance of our modern world on the supply of electricity. I say that because one of the very first things that goes out in a major bushfire event is the power supply and, in fact, it does not even have to be a bushfire event; it could be a day of severe wind. I have no doubt that, with the upcoming storm event we are going to be dealing with over the next 36 to 48 hours, there will be power supply disruptions.

We are so very reliant upon the supply of electricity in our modern-day lives for everything, particularly for household appliances, and on a fire day it includes water pumps. It can actually upset the best laid plans of residents in their efforts to defend their property and their homes. People need to be conscious that the power supply more than likely will go out. It is also a critical part of our communications, and I am talking about internet access, mobile phone coverage, and even landline phone coverage.

I speak to this from experience because there was a power outage on Eyre Peninsula just a few weeks ago; it was taken out as a result of a storm event. What we discovered was that it took a couple of days to repair the damage. In the meantime, not only were we without our household appliances but the eight-hour battery life of the mobile phone towers expired, which left us without communications. On an extreme day, on a day of high risk and high incidence, that capacity for communication is so essential that we really need to be conscious of how we manage good communication in events such as these.

As I said earlier, the farmers have had good rains this season and their properties have recovered from the fire. I hope that, as a result of this year, they are able to get their businesses back on track and also to repair their lives as best they can.

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (11:52): I just need to put on the record that I am a member of the Country Fire Service, and I am speaking as the shadow minister, not as a baggy pants with Meadows brigade today. The report on the Pinery fire is an interesting one. What is even more important, though, for all of us are the lessons learnt. There are a number of lessons that have been learnt, and I hope that those lessons are going to be not only learnt but actually acted on. Time and time again we see the reports that come out of bushfire inquiries, right back from the royal commissions into Ash Wednesday through to the Wangary fire and the Sampson Flat AFAC inquiry, and we have seen Euan Ferguson, the former head of the CFS, doing an inquiry into the Waroona fires in Western Australia recently, and, when you look across all of the recommendations, many of those overlap.

Particularly in the lessons learnt in the Pinery fires, there are a number which are absolutely imperative that we do act on. Certainly, can I say that lesson number one was changes to incident management. There have been different levels of incident management teams in South Australia for many years now, but when you get the big fires it is the level 3 incident management teams that come in.

I was very pleased to see that the CFS, being proactive, had a two-day seminar and workshop on incident management just recently, and I am looking forward to seeing the results of those. That workshop, to implement the new AIIMS-4 training that is going on, is one of the first lessons that was indicated in the report on the Pinery fire. It is very, very important that you do get effective incident management, whether it is a car crash and managing traffic, or whether it is at the other ends of the spectrum with big disasters like Pinery and Sampson Flat.

Lesson 2 is public information and warnings. The member for Flinders talked about power outages, and that has been a huge issue over the years. We saw that at Pinery. We need to make sure that we are prepared for extended power outages. I go back to a letter that was written to the federal parliament inquiry into emergency services and emergency warning systems. Back in 2011, some five years ago, the then acting police minister, Bernie Finnigan (I am not going to say 'honourable') wrote a letter on Kevin Foley's letterhead talking about the impact of extended power blackouts on warning systems for the State Emergency Services, including country fire brigades and landholders.

He talked about the impact of extended power blackouts not being restricted to warning systems in South Australia, but agencies such as the police, the Country Fire Service, the SES, the MFS and the ambulance service, that all rely on the GRN, which has a battery backup of about eight to 16 hours, depending on who you speak to. When you speak to the telcos about their battery backups, they are about a maximum of 20 hours. After that, you have no communication: you have no mobiles, in many cases no landlines, and you certainly have no warning systems. Satellite phones certainly will work. Until recently, you could not dial 000 on a satellite phone, but fortunately that has been resolved and now you can.

This is going to be an ongoing problem. If we see trees come down onto powerlines in the Hills and the metropolitan area this week, we could be without power for days and days. So it is very important that we make sure that our early warning systems are in place, and also the follow-ups, so we can keep people informed and, more importantly, so our emergency services can talk to each other. Unfortunately, as former emergency services minister Piccolo said, VHF radios are the backup, and they are if they are a line of site. Even the new digital VHF radios being rolled out now are really limited to a line of sight.

We need to make sure that there are services and systems in place. Part of that is automatic vehicle location. I have been going on about that for years in here, after premier Rann announced that they were going to install automatic vehicle location systems in CFS trucks in 2008, I think it was, eight years ago. Automatic vehicle location is another recommendation in the Pinery report, so we know where those firetrucks are. They can be linked through to all different sorts of radios, mobile radios in the trucks, back to the GRN, and to a satellite system as well, and also the wireless system, an internet system that can work through there.

We need to put that in place. We need to make sure our firies, our emergency services, are safe when they are out and about on days like today or in bushfires, or at any time when they are putting their lives at risk. Part of doing the right thing is making sure that the trucks they are in provide the best protection. For the minister to come out and say that eight out of 10 trucks will be fixed within the next four years is not good enough. It has to be 10 out of 10 trucks that are going to be fixed and, if possible, they should be fixed before this fire season, and, if not, those trucks should only be used as backup trucks. We need to make sure that our firefighters, our volunteers, are given the very best protection.

They have the halo systems, the water systems, on the outside of the cabs; they have in-cab breathing in the event of a burnover; and they have the fire curtains. But they also should have in-cab pump starting so they can actually start the pumps on the back of the truck to get the systems working because at the moment, if they are in the cab, they cannot start the pump without actually leaving the cab. We need to have in-cab pump starting. Those sorts of things are simple, but they save lives. This is a very important report. We must look at the lessons and learn from those lessons. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.