A MINERAL earth fuel break that lay just outside the township of Marysville would have had no impact on the fast-moving Black Saturday inferno before it hit the township, the Victorian bushfires royal commission has heard.
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Aerial photographs of Marysville taken before Black Saturday showing the relatively narrow fuel break were displayed to a panel of fuel reduction experts at the commission yesterday.
When questioned, some said the fuel break would have only assisted with road access and as a location to conduct firefighting, but would have had no impact on the bushfire.
Thirty-four people were killed on Black Saturday in Marysville. Four more people were killed in the wider region by the same bushfire.
Former CSIRO research scientist Phil Cheney said: ''It's just an access road and really doesn't constitute a fuel break in my mind.''
Mr Cheney also told the commission that fuel reduction burns done near Marysville were not large enough to mitigate the impact of the Black Saturday fire. ''In my opinion these blocks were too small to have sufficient impact in reducing the overall fire intensity and ember attack on the township,'' he said.
Melbourne University fire behaviour expert Kevin Tolhurst said he agreed with Mr Cheney's views. ''My immediate impression is that it had no impact on a fire burning through there but provided some access for suppression work. But in and of itself it won't have achieved terribly much,'' Dr Tolhurst said of the fuel break.
But Kerri Judd, SC, counsel for the state government, rejected the question put to the fire experts about the effectiveness of the fuel break, saying it was ''misleading''. She said relevant information about Marysville wasn't factored into the question and the location of earlier planned burns near the town were not shown in the photograph.
During a discussion about a hypothetical planned burning program in north-eastern Victoria, Professor Mark Adams from the University of Sydney said communities in that region were ''desperate to see a program of prescribed fire''.
North-east Victorian communities had experienced several major bushfires in recent years and clearly understood the bushfire versus fuel reduction equation.
''There has to be recognition of what you can gain from a program of prescribed burning versus a million-plus hectares [burnt in a bushfire], months on end, and what that does to tourism, the wine industry, the pine plantations and the cultural assets,'' he said.
In other evidence the commission heard:
- Australia is the only OECD country without a national forest and fire research agency.
- It would be appropriate for Victoria to adapt aspects of the approach to fuel reduction burning in the south-west corner of Western Australia, but it would be inappropriate to ''adopt'' the WA strategy in its entirety.
- Erosion in water catchments after severe bushfires can be eliminated, or significantly reduced, by planned burns.
