Summary Report – Phase 2 – Relief and recovery
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Message from the Inspector-General Bushfires can be life-changing events for those who become caught up in them. Fortunately, most Victorians will never directly experience a bushfire. Most of those who do will endure such an event only once in a lifetime, yet for many the consequences will be profound and long lasting. Phase 2 of this Inquiry seeks to explore how relief and recovery are facilitated, how the impact of such events can be mitigated and outcomes improved through better planning and, if necessary, reforms to the emergency management arrangements. In the 18 months since the 2019–20 Victorian bushfires were finally contained, the individuals and communities affected have passed through the intense challenges of the immediate relief efforts. They remain on a much longer journey. Past experience has shown the path to recovery after a major bushfire is neither quick nor without a myriad of complications. It is not simply about the physical restoration of what was there before but the reinvigoration – and sometimes even the rebirth – of entire communities. None of this is new to Victorians; our communities have responded to and endeavoured to recover from many such events. Each of them is different, as are the experiences of those who live through their onset and aftermath. What is common to every major bushfire is the opportunity to learn and improve. In the case of the 2019–20 bushfires, the onset of a global pandemic and the need for all Australians to respond to this threat posed additional recovery challenges, especially in Victoria which was the hardest hit of all jurisdictions. Such compounding events are not unusual. Bushfires are often soon followed by calamitous floods. Even the clash of major bushfires and pandemic is not without precedent. A century ago, huge fires in the Otway Ranges in 1919 that killed three people and left 500 homeless coincided with the first serious outbreak of the deadly ‘Spanish’ influenza pandemic across Victoria. One difficulty with compounding events is determining with precision which subsequent impacts – especially economic and psychosocial – are caused by which event. While this Inquiry’s terms of reference did not contemplate the COVID-19 pandemic, its impacts have obviously informed both the evidence gathered and the report’s findings. As I noted in the Phase 1 Inquiry Report, there have been marked improvements in Victoria’s emergency management system since the 2009 Victorian bushfires and 2010–11 floods. These were evident in the preparedness for and response to the 2019–20 fire season. Less apparent, however, is the extent to which relief and recovery have enjoyed an equivalent level of attention or resourcing over the past decade. This is not to imply negligence on the part of those responsible, but it does suggest a lack of investment in the people, processes and entities that deliver both relief and recovery during and after emergencies. It is apparent to my Inquiry that there are different understandings between government, agencies, non-government organisations and the community – especially in relation to recovery. Concepts such as ‘shared responsibility’ and ’community-led’ remain elusive even though they are widely used across the emergency management sector. Similarly, there is often a lag between administrative action by government and activity on the ground. Communities in crisis have little patience for inaction and zero tolerance of processes that do little more than impede recovery. Often this is a matter of poor communication. Sometimes its root cause is bureaucratic inertia.
