The actions on this page are identified in the Victorian Government response to Recommendation 3 from the IGEM Inquiry into the 2019-20 Victorian Fire Season - Phase 1 report.
IGEM Recommendation 3: Safer Together
The Inspector-General for Emergency Management (IGEM) recommends that the State support the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (or the single entity referenced in Recommendation 4) and its partners to expand the Safer Together program to:
- increase program uptake and adoption by legislated fuel management organisations including local government, the Department of Transport and VicTrack
- implement a consistent risk-based approach to fuel management program planning from strategic through to operational and tactical levels supported by
- appropriate risk assessment tools
- monitoring and evaluation
- reporting mechanisms
- develop common spatial datasets for use by all road managers, standardising road and roadside fuel maintenance levels based on bushfire risk and sharing resources to maintain continuous roadsides managed by multiple parties
Actions
Action 3.1: Expand the Safer Together program, increasing involvement of partners across the emergency management sector
The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning will deliver an expanded Safer Together program by December 2020, including increased involvement for:
- Emergency Management Victoria
- the Country Fire Authority
- Department of Transport and its agencies
- local government.
Action 3.2: Release updated regional Bushfire Management Strategies to guide fuel management activities
The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning and the Country Fire Authority will release updated regional Bushfire Management Strategies to guide fuel management activities across public and private land by December 2020.
Action 3.3: Develop a whole of sector strategy for land and fire management across a range of land tenures
The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, in collaboration with Emergency Management Victoria and other land and fire managers, will lead the development of a whole of sector strategy to guide land and fire management in the context of:
- a changing climate
- growing population
- changing demographics.
In addition to public land, the whole of sector strategy will consider how to effectively support road managers and local governments to mitigate bushfire risks on roadsides and in high bushfire risk local government areas.
Action 3.4: Review risk-based strategic and operational planning frameworks and processes to include roadsides and private land
The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning will review risk-based strategic and operational planning frameworks and processes to better incorporate roadsides and private land by December 2022.
Action 3.5: Include private land, roadsides and other public land in monitoring, evaluation and reporting
The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning will review the fuel management Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Framework and the annual Fuel Management Report to identify changes required to more fully incorporate private land and roadsides. The review will be complete by July 2021.
Action 3.6: Review existing roadside spatial datasets to better manage risk on roadsides and rail corridors
The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, in partnership with the Department of Transport, local government and other road and rail managers, will review existing roadside spatial datasets to identify gaps and opportunities to improve the consistency and usability of these data sets to manage bushfire risk on roadsides and rail corridors.
An update on these actions can be found in IGEM's progress report
Updated