THE rush to rebuild homes in bushland settlements such as Marysville that were devastated by the Black Saturday fires has been criticised by planning and environment experts.
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The risk was so great in some parts of Victoria that residential development in them should be prohibited, the Bushfires Royal Commission was told.
A panel of six experts said this ban should cover new development and ''new subdivision of existing areas''. They also called on the government to consider buying back some privately owned land in fire danger areas.
Roz Hansen, an urban planner and professor at Deakin University, said she understood people's attachment to their burnt properties and their neighbourhood and their wish to return, but questioned the wisdom of rebuilding homes in high-fire-risk areas.
''I was disappointed and somewhat alarmed about allowing those communities to go back and resettle. And I think we've really got our hands full in terms of guaranteeing them their safety in the future, unless we change the major considerations around those areas in terms of bushland setting,'' she said.
If it was decided that certain areas should be be rebuilt, ''then we would have to deal with some very hard planning decisions about how we rehouse and relocate those people''.
''I certainly recognise the urgency of rehousing people and I certainly recognise the attachment, personal and social attachments, that those communities had to those locations - and in particular I'm thinking of Marysville as a very obvious one.
''But when one looks at those particular settlements … in a planning sense, and in putting bushfire risk management at the top of the planning considerations, I would not have said that those settlements should have been resettled in the recovery program,'' she said.
The comments, made during a Royal Commission forum of planning and environment experts, could spark an angry reaction from some residents of bushfire-hit communities. Many have displayed hand-painted signs carrying messages from locals vowing to rebuild.
After Professor Hansen had outlined her views about rebuilding, counsel assisting the commission, Melinda Richards, asked the other five panellists if they disagreed with her comments. None did.
Mark Chladil, from the Tasmanian Fire Service, said that too often after a disaster the governmental response was about the short term. ''We see a general expression that it's better social welfare to put these people back the way they were without consideration of the planning issues … In the long term you're compounding the issue, because you'll be back.
''I've actually got one live case at the moment where a house in a bushfire-prone area has burnt down twice … It's due to go again,'' he said.
Associate Professor Michael Buxton from RMIT told the commission that the large number of small lots in the heavily wooded Shire of Murrindindi was a ''disaster waiting to happen''. He said Murrindindi's farm zone had about 2000 lots under two hectares.
The rapidly growing population in the heavily wooded urban fringe was ''occurring in some of the highest fire risk areas on the planet''.
In other evidence yesterday the commission was told:
¦ Planning rules in Victoria addressing bushfire risk were badly fragmented and a new agency should be established within government to overhaul the system.
¦ More prescriptive bushfire building rules were needed.
¦ It was surprising that the State Government had a climate change tool that predicted the impact of rising sea levels, yet no such tool existed to predict the impact of bushfires.
