The unfortunate adjournment of the coronial inquiry into the 2022 Orroral Valley fire that devastated almost a third of the ACT means Canberrans now have to wait even longer for answers to the many questions about the events of January 27, 2020.
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ACT Chief Coroner Lorraine Walker, who announced the inquiry on July 29 last year, was unable to continue with hearings scheduled for this week after contracting COVID-19.
Her investigation, which saw members of the crew of the helicopter who had inadvertently caused the blaze give evidence on Tuesday, is highly significant in that it is likely to be the one and only public inquiry into an event that burnt out almost 80 per cent of the Namadgi National Park, threatened homes in Canberra's south, and destroyed houses in NSW.
Chief Coroner Walker's decision to hold the inquiry was warmly welcomed at the time by many Canberrans given the ACT government had repeatedly rejected calls to initiate its own investigation.
As recently as last July the Chief Minister was rejecting public demands for answers as to how the fire started, why it wasn't reported at once and how it had spread so quickly. He said it would lead to a "witch hunt" against the crew of the helicopter which ignited the blaze with its searchlight.
He told the media that all that mattered in the aftermath of the incident was that lessons were learnt.
That is simply not good enough. Many of the Canberrans still traumatised by the deadly 2003 bushfires would have been revisiting their own personal hells during late January and early February in 2020 and wondering if they would have to flee their homes.
It's also not good enough given the passionate attachment Canberrans have to Namadgi, an area of great natural beauty that serves as a place of recreation and renewal. The park also provides sanctuary for many species of native animals and plants, some of which are endangered.
The fire, which burnt well into February 2020, was arguably the worst environmental disaster in the territory's history. It occurred at the same time hundreds of other "black summer" bushfires were raging up and down the east of Australia in a national catastrophe that made headlines around the world.
This was far to big an event to be swept under the carpet with a plethora of internal reviews conducted behind closed doors.
While nobody has ever called for the scalps of the individual ADF personnel involved, Chief Coroner Walker has put any possibility of Mr Barr's "witch hunt" manifesting itself to bed by suppressing their identities.
That will certainly have avoided some embarrassment given Tuesday's revelation the fire started when the helicopter landed to give the crew a toilet break.
While the crew members have testified that the searchlight, which was at 550 degrees Celsius, was on because it helped with "traffic de-confliction" - even though it was broad daylight - that means little or nothing to people outside the aviation sector. One would hope that when hearings resume this issue will be explored further.
The same goes for the failure of the aircrew to call in the fire until they landed at Canberra airport 45 minutes later. While it is true the pilot had his hands full given the machine had been damaged that was not necessarily true of other crew members, at least one of whom photographed the flames as they spread.
There is still much to be learnt and many questions that demand answers.
Canberrans will be wishing the Chief Coroner a speedy recovery and looking forward to her getting to the bottom of this in the new year.
