The intensity of Victoria's bushfires has again raised the questions whether householders are better advised to leave a bushfire area or remain and try to save their property, and what powers police and other authorities ought to have to require flight when they judge it necessary.

Neither question is simple, and there are no simple answers nor are the answers the same in all cases, particularly in the sort of extreme conditions witnessed on the weekend. Reports of these Victorian fires, like those of the 2003 fires in Canberra, describe a Dresden-like firestorm, very fast-moving, sucking oxygen from the environment and killing with radiant heat well ahead of, and behind, the flames. Victims were said to have been overwhelmed almost before they knew the fire was upon them. In any such situation and generally these can be predicted the preservation of life is deemed far more important than the protection of property, and many would support the right of emergency authorities to order, and perhaps to enforce, evacuation.

Certainly the ferocity of Saturday's firestorms had been predicted. All the signs were present even before the day dawned, of extremes of temperature; high winds coming from the most unfavourable quarters; and high fuel loads, themselves made far more volatile by succeeding days of how temperature and low humidity. Existing fires had not been contained and those responsible for trying to contain them were openly fearing the worst. There has been no criticism of meteorological services or of warnings issued, and, if people at some very local levels can complain that there was a shortage of precise information about the threat directly facing them, this was more a function of the information services themselves being overwhelmed by fresh events and the number of fronts.

No doubt hindsight, and a planned Royal Commission, will suggest some things were left undone, and lessons that might make a fire of such terrible intensity less lethal in future, but what is known so far does not suggest either negligence or incompetence by the authorities. Their inadequacy for the task, if that is how anyone would describe it, will most likely be found to have derived from the overwhelming size of the task Nature presented them.

This is in some respects different from the criticism made after the Canberra bushfire even if, as in Victoria, circumstances concatenated to the point where the front of the fire became overwhelming.

In Canberra's case, at dawn, before, for example, the imminence and probable inevitability of the disaster were realised by most, even some of those who had an inkling (or ought to have had one) thought they had a buffer against disaster in the open spaces between Weston Creek and the Cotter. Although the record shows that the authorities were warning of dangerous conditions and the need to take precautions, many claim with some justice that they had no real idea of the danger they were in. For many such people, the anger about this centred on lost ''minor'' possessions and memorabilia which they might well have secured in good time had they known rather than the devastation of their homes or the missed opportunities (and risks) of staying in their dwellings. Be that as it may, some others suggest that some of the errors and confusions as the crisis struck may have actually saved life even if it increased property loss. Had, for example, firefighters been deployed on Eucumbene Drive, as arguably they might have been with better communications and better control, it is likely that most would have been incinerated as the firestorm roared out of the forest.

Firefighters point out that householders present on the scene can do much to reduce the risk of fire damage both before and after the flames arrive. Ember attack can be resisted: a good many houses are, moreover, lost after the front has departed by a failure to put out spot fires and focus on eaves. Over the years, firefighters' more relaxed approach to the presence of householders has sometimes brought them into conflict with police who are, naturally, focused primarily on protection of life.

Particularly in rural fires, police often fear that late evacuation increases risk to life because of confusion, smoke and choked roads. In fires of incredible severity, such as Saturday's, there is ample evidence of this peril, from the number who died in or near vehicles. In firestorms, moreover, the capacity to take any shelter at all from the fire front, let alone secure air supplies, is much reduced. On Saturday people experienced in fires died, and others died because there was no time between the moment the risk was manageable and the moment it was not.

Clearly, the more adverse the conditions, the greater the threat to life. That's a call ultimately for police, and one they must have a right to enforce. Perhaps some property that might have been saved will be lost as a result. Sad as that it, it is not worth the loss of life.