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School Fire Refuges Fail Safety Test
by Dewi Cooke, The Age, July 1, 2009
A confidential report of government school refuges in bushfire-prone areas has shown that only one out of 32 was currently acceptable "as is", the Bushfires Royal Commission has revealed.
The April 2009 Government report found that only Upwey South Primary School met the requirements to be considered safe without the need for any improvements.
In evidence from Tony Cook, deputy secretary of the Office for Children within the Education Department, the commission was told that a comprehensive report compiled by the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority found seven refuges to be "totally unacceptable". These included Sherbrooke Community School and Upwey High School. A further seven were considered "marginally acceptable" and 17 were found to be acceptable subject to repairs.
Refuges were rolled out in a number of Victorian schools after a 1988 report from a joint committee of the Education Department, the Country Fire Authority and other emergency services. It had been policy in the Eastern Metropolitan school region since 1989 that all schools in or near bushland provide a refuge for students and staff.
The commission was told that all but three of the school refuges in Victoria were in the eastern region. The other three are in the northern region and a similar assessment for those had been conducted, Mr Cook said.
The majority of the schools reviewed had high priority or urgent recommendations relating to vegetation clearance. Other common improvements needed were fire equipment training for staff and additional fire-proof protection on windows or doors.
Mr Cook said that each school had been given copies of the report and some might be able to use their maintenance budgets to make the minor repairs needed to bring them up to standard. However, he said there was no decision yet on whether to allocate specific funding to carry out the repairs needed for all the refuges.
To questioning by counsel assisting the commission, Rachel Doyle, Mr Cook admitted there were issues with the broader community knowing that certain schools were refuge points. He said he was particularly concerned about smaller schools where facilities might not be big enough to accommodate more people.
"If it's deemed that there's a particular location in the school that is a refuge, what does that mean for community education?" he said.
Mr Cook said that since the February 7 fires the department was reviewing school bushfire and emergency management policies.
Also yesterday, the commission heard that more than 80 per cent of calls to the Victorian Bushfire Information Line went unanswered on Black Saturday.
The unprecedented volume of calls on the day — 12,819, more than the phone service had ever had on a single day — caused an overflow of calls to be taken by Centrelink call centres. Callers able to get through had an average wait of 11 minutes. The longest wait was 16 minutes 22 seconds.
Department of Sustainability and Environment customer service manager Kathryn Venters presented figures to the commission that showed only 1754 calls were answered on February 7. A further 1307 callers hung up after getting through to an automated selection menu.