Bushfire Management Arrangements
Bushfire Management Arrangements
In February 2009 bushfires devastated many Victorian towns and localities, resulting in the loss of 173 lives. Since these harrowing and severe bushfires a Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission has been established.
The Commission has released a comprehensive Interim Report with release of a final report intended at the end of July 2010.
Bushfires NT has spent considerable energy in considering how it might better focus its resources to minimise the likelihood and consequence of a similar event impacting on the Territory community.
Initiatives include:
- Bushfires NT and Northern Territory Fire and Rescue Service working collaboratively to develop strategic hazard abatement programs for greater protection of property from bushfire in urban and the urban/rural interface
- Adoption of a new national framework for fire warnings which includes a redesigned fire danger ratings system that incorporates a new category of ‘Catastrophic’; introduction of an improved bushfire emergency warning system designed to provide information to communities in the path of uncontrolled bushfires with the potential to impact on life and property, to enable residents to make potentially life saving decisions quickly
- Enhanced arrangement with the national emergency broadcaster ABC, and other media, for disseminating ‘Bushfire Emergency Warning’ messages and ‘Bushfire Watch and Act’ messages
- Trialling of a telephone based text and voice emergency messaging system for landline and mobile telephone subscribers in areas with the potential to be impacted by an uncontrolled fire.
More detailed information about these initiatives will be released in the near future.