VICTORIA'S most senior CFA officer has come under attack at the Bushfires Royal Commission for neglecting key responsibilities of his job on Black Saturday.
Russell Rees was accused of being "divorced from fundamental aspects" of his role as CFA chief officer, including protecting lives, providing warnings and overseeing fire predictions.
Mr Rees had earlier told the commission that his role was a non-operational one, but senior counsel assisting the commission, Jack Rush, QC, said it was a "core responsibility to warn communities of the potential risk of fire". He said the chief officer should be given legal responsibility for issuing warnings.
Premier John Brumby last night backed Mr Rees, saying he could not have asked for more from the CFA chief and his leadership team.
"I think they did an outstanding job and I think more generally the community believe that as well," Mr Brumby said.
Lawyers assisting the commission yesterday made a series of recommendations that could radically change the state's response to bushfires, including the reintroduction of community refuges by local councils.
Commission chairman Bernard Teague queried why the State Government could not accept responsibility for refuges and, with input from local communities, simply "get it done".
"My preliminary view is that there needs to be refuges, but they need to be much better organised than they are now," Mr Teague said.
Counsel assisting the commission, Rachel Doyle, said: "Provision of refuges, even for the ill-prepared, the lazy or the stupid, should not be overlooked, because there is a need to protect all lives."
The Age believes that the State Government, which will make a submission today, is not opposed to refuges.
Refuges were recommended after the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires, but have fallen out of favour, in part because councils have been refused legal indemnity against death and injury.
Mr Rush argued that the "primacy of life" should be the guiding principle for the next month's interim report and should be at the core of the controversial stay-or-go policy.
Rather than being scrapped altogether, counsel assisting Lisa Nichols said the core of the policy should remain, but with significant changes.
These included the CFA giving advice to residents as to whether they should remain in their homes or leave, and voluntary evacuations for those who chose to go.
Incident controllers would be empowered to issue evacuation advice and warnings would include information such as a fire's predicted impact and the fire danger index.
This would be a massive change from the present practice, in which CFA officers are banned from providing such advice to residents.
Mr Brumby backed the controversial stay-or-go fire policy, with refinements, as the right policy for Victoria. He said it was impossible to consider a forced evacuation policy, which on Black Saturday would have resulted in the compulsory evacuation of up to 2 million people.
"That begs all sorts of questions about where they would go and where they would stay," he said.
"Had you evacuated people earlier in the day, given the wind change came through earlier than predicted by the bureau, you could have seen literally tens of thousands people stranded on roads."
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