VICROADS failed to assess the fire risk of 80,000ha of vegetation along its 22,300km of roadsides before Black Saturday.
That was the finding of lawyers assisting the Victorian Bushfires Black Saturday Royal Commission, who said VicRoads simply opted to mow three metres behind roadside guideposts as its fire management strategy.
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VicRoads adopted the strategy despite the Victorian Farmers Federation warning it could have catastrophic consequences.
In November 2008, members of the VFF's Wangaratta branch warned VicRoads its low level of fire prevention on the Hume Freeway was putting lives at risk.
"Given the area's fire history, one width of a slasher is not wide enough," VFF branch members stated in a letter to VicRoads.
"Who is going to stand in front of the Coroner and admit that they had been informed that the smaller fire break was inadequate if we have a disastrous fire?"
VicRoads regional services executive director Stephen Walter Brown told the commission in February the authority removed and pruned trees only in response to road-safety issues, not fire prevention.
The commission's lawyers said VicRoads needed to work with the CFA to devise a risk-assessment process for the length of the Hume Freeway that would result in a detailed program of works suitable for the differing conditions and fire risk along its route.
"It appears that VicRoads focuses on standard mowing treatments of roadsides to the exclusion of fire risk which may be posed by other vegetation, such as shrubs, leaf litter and trees," counsel assisting said.
Counsel assisting also called on the Victorian Government to ease restrictions on clearing roadside native vegetation and deliver more resources to local councils to manage their roadside fuel loads.
