New fire probe needs to be informed by past tragedies

On Wednesday volunteer and professional firefighters in the Tathra and Bega area dismissed any talk of tension between their services, describing their relationship as close and respectful.

But some of those questions - dismissed by some as union-driven politics - about a so-called turf war, are not new. And previous, exhaustive inquiries appear to have done little to settle the matter.

There were similar concerns about a so-called turf war raised in the aftermath of both the 2001 and 2003 bushfires in Canberra, hinting at a cultural divide that ran deep between the two organisations. Many argue no such cultural issues exist.

But the inquiry into the January 2003 bushfires heard evidence around the lines of demarcation between the urban and rural brigades, lawyers assisting Coroner Maria Doogan even putting to her that "in a jurisdiction as small as the ACT", the two fire services should merge.

And the inquiry into the Christmas Eve 2001 bushfires heard that there was confusion about who was in command of the multiple fires.

The chief fire control officer at the time, Peter Lucas-Smith, for one, believed the 2001 fires proved the need for "clearer operational protocols" between the two fire services in the ACT.

The McLeod report, which investigated the operational response to the 2003 fires also called for a "more unified and independent emergency services organisation".

That inquiry recommended that emergency incidents in the ACT be managed jointly by the urban and bushfire brigades "regardless of location or the services' areas of responsibility". But the firefighters' union argued to that inquiry that the urban brigade should be a separate entity, with a clear line of communication to the minister, in a bid to improve training and resources.

Close to 10 years after the 2003 fires, that divide between city and country fire services were again being addressed, this time in a report by the ACT Bushfire Council, in 2012.

The council believed the ACT did have a "unified firefighting arrangement" but " because of the different cultures that exist in different organisations some tensions exist and council considers that a greater effort is needed to facilitate joint training exercises and fire management operations across the organisations".

As head of the inquiry into the handling of the Tathra fires, former Australian Federal Police boss Mick Keelty should be sensitive to the issues, a resident of Canberra during the 2003 fires.

The NSW coronial inquiry into the 2003 bushfires was held in Queanbeyan and completed in just four days.That inquiry found no blame and held no one to account. NSW Deputy State Coroner Carl Milovanovich said then his court would not be a "court of blame".

The ACT coronial inquiry into the same fires, by contrast, went for months and went into forensic detail of the fires. But NSW argued an ACT coroner could not make any judgement of how a fire was fought in NSW - even when that fire did cross the border and cause massive devastation in Canberra. The coronial inquiry, in the end, quarantined itself to the ACT management of the fires, effectively making no recommendations about NSW.

No one is looking to blame anyone after a fire. What they are looking to do is identify mistakes so they are not repeated. Those in power should not confuse the two issues. It can only be hoped that those painful lessons learned in 2003 will not be forgotten as authorities begin a new round of soul-searching into this latest disaster.