NO ONE with the highest responsibility for emergencies was at the helm when Victoria burned, writes MICHELLE DRAPER
But someone would ultimately pay for the failures that, had they been reversed, arguably could have prevented some of the 173 deaths on the blackest day in Australia's bushfire history.
So far, that someone has not included any member of John Brumby's Labor government.
Mr Brumby and Emergency Services Minister Bob Cameron both largely escaped the individual scathing criticism levelled at Emergency Services heads by the top lawyers assisting the bushfires inquiry.
But the incumbent party now faces a potentially damning report, just four months out from an election, over the Black Saturday bushfires that occurred under its watch.
The warnings and leadership failures aired over 12 months at the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission will culminate in a final report tomorrow that could include recommendations the state government's own lawyers have argued against.
Some of the fallout from the report has already been minimised, reducing potential pre-election embarrassment, with the resignation of the state's chief fire officer Russell Rees and former police boss Christine Nixon.
Conveniently, both will be out of the way before voters head to the polls.
But will the government itself be forced to take any responsibility for the February 7 disaster?
The most stinging critique of individuals in the state's emergency services hierarchy has so far been reserved for Mr Rees and Ms Nixon.
Last year's interim report found Mr Rees was divorced from fundamental aspects of his responsibilities on the day.
This year the criticism continued, with the fiery lawyer assisting the commission, Jack Rush QC, highlighting Mr Rees's litany of failings: he failed to consult a predictive map of the fires, didn't speak to any incident controllers on the ground and did not monitor warnings to the community.
"It's as if the senior fire personnel were powerless behind the glass, unable or unwilling to influence or attempt to influence the tragedy that was unfolding," Mr Rush lamented.
He was equally incredulous of Ms Nixon's actions on the day. As then chief commissioner of Victoria Police, Ms Nixon was the co-ordinator of the state's disaster plan.
She was also the deputy co-ordinator in chief of emergency management, one rung below Mr Cameron, the state's co-ordinator in chief.
Despite this, Ms Nixon left the main control centre for the fires at 6pm, after coming to the realisation that a disaster was unfolding, without ensuring someone else would take her place.
Meanwhile, outside Melbourne, the fires fuelled by the southwesterly wind change wrought their destruction on terrified communities, many caught completely unaware as warnings came too late, or not at all.
Nixon went home, then went out to dinner.
This, Mr Rush seethed, was entirely inconsistent with her responsibilities, was an "oversight of grave proportions", and was a failure that "cannot be placed at the feet of others".
For nearly three hours, at the height of the fires, neither the chief co-ordinator or deputy co-ordinator of Victoria's disaster plan were present at the control centre.
The royal commission heard last year that no one agency had a statutory responsibility to keep the community informed, leading commissioner Susan Pascoe to comment that there was a perception in the community "that there was no one in control on the day".
But while Ms Nixon's absence during that period was slammed as displaying an unrealistic view of leadership, Mr Cameron avoided blame - and pointed the finger.
"It was unwise of her to go home," he opined under the commission's scrutiny.
However, there was one task Mr Cameron could have and should have considered, according to Mr Rush - declaring a state of disaster.
The legal power to declare a state of disaster lies with the premier, but he would do so based on advice from Mr Cameron or Ms Nixon in their disaster co-ordination roles.
If ever the state had faced circumstances justifying such a declaration, February 7 was it.
"We find it incredulous as to their (Mr Cameron and Ms Nixon's) lack of consideration that was given to their declaration of a state of disaster either on that day or during the recovery phase after these fires," Mr Rush said.
These personal attacks were not welcomed by the government. Its lawyers urged the commissioners not to make any findings against individuals at all - but that seems unlikely, given Rees was singled out in the earlier report.
While the commission may not hold the Brumby government or its ministers personally responsible for failings on Black Saturday, the government is accountable for implementing the inquiry's recommendations.
And there are a few question marks hanging over its track record so far.
The government last year controversially pre-empted the commission's interim report by announcing it would seek to establish Neighbourhood Safer Places for communities to shelter during a fire, as a last resort.
The term got caught up in the commission's recommendations for actual fire refuges, confusing the two. The government appeared to be obfuscating.
The commissioners have been asked to demand the bureaucrat-laden terms "Neighbourhood Safer Places" and "NSPs" be dumped and replaced, simply, with "shelter".
When it came to implementing its own policy, the government was accused of dragging its feet.
NSW streaked ahead and approved hundreds of shelters in light of the commission's recommendations.
To date, about 600 last resort sites have been pinpointed in NSW while Victoria, as at yesterday, has 101.
The signs placed at those sites identified in Victoria, much to the commission lawyers' chagrin, advise people that their home may be a safer place to shelter in a fire.
Outraged, the lawyers called on the commissioners to recommend that the offending language be removed.
It flies in the face of what Mr Rush and his team argued in the final days of the commission - that the stay or go policy failed abysmally on February 7, 2009.
That houses don't always protect people.
The commission has been asked to recommend the policy be abandoned and replaced with a wider range of options, including voluntary evacuation, for people caught in a bushfire.
The policy that preached people should either prepare, stay and defend their property, or leave early, was underpinned by the belief residents had a good chance of survival by sheltering in a well-prepared home.
But the commission's lawyers argued Black Saturday rewrote the history books, when 113 people died in homes, compared to 24 who were fleeing at the time of their deaths. Stay or go "unnecessarily exposed people to risk", Mr Rush said.
The state government disagreed that the policy failed.
Its lawyers vehemently argued the policy was based on decades of experience of people dying while fleeing bushfires at the eleventh hour.
Neil Clelland SC said the government believed the policy must continue to emphasise that staying in homes during bushfires was less risky than being caught in the open.
He admitted that on a code red or catastrophic fire danger day, the key message to everyone was `leave early', not stay and defend.
But the notion that a community will pack up and leave, abandoning businesses, every code red day has already been exposed as flawed.
About 75 to 80 per cent of respondents to a survey in bushfire-prone areas said they would `wait and see' if a fire threatened before leaving.
The commission's lawyers favour a system where emergency managers can direct people where to go and what to do once a fire starts, rather than the `stay or go' approach, which is based on trusting people to change their behaviour.
If the commissioners agree, the state government will have to reconsider its opposition to dropping stay or go.
The lives of voters living in high fire danger areas could depend on it.
- AAP
