MELBOURNE, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- An independent review into a 2015 West Australian bushfire that killed four people has recommended urgent changes to the state's emergency response system.
Four people were killed on Nov. 17 last year by a series of bushfires that swept through the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia (WA) from Nov. 15 to 26.
On the anniversary of the four's deaths, an independent committee into the fire, which also destroyed 19 buildings and hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land, released its report, condemning the poor communication between the WA Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) and bushfire brigades.
The report made 12 recommendations ranging from urgent improvements to the chain of command in such circumstances and communication to long-term changes regarding clearer legislation governing bushfire control.
Dan Sanderson, director of the review and a local farmer, said that farmers in WA were used to dealing with fires but the Esperance fires needed urgent support which arrived too late.
"We fight a lot of fires during the harvest," Sanderson said on Thursday.
"We have enough resources to deal with that, but if it looks like it's going to escalate to a level two fire we want to be able to call on the resources to bomb it early.
The report brought into question the allocation of the 240 million U.S. dollar Emergency Services Levy (ESL), a fund that is contributed to farmers and residents in vulnerable communities state-wide.
Linda Campbell, another director of the review, said that the money was being absorbed by the DFES bureaucracy and not getting to local firefighters who needed it most.
"We really want to empower the local communities to be able to manage their own fires and the problem we have is we are starved of funds," Campbell told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Thursday.
