The #BushfireRC is back this morning and will spend the next three days examining the role and response of local governments to natural disasters. A spoiler: it varies widely!

On the witness list today are six people from local governments in three states.

Dominique Hogan-Doran SC says the hearing today will cover the issues BEFORE the disaster, planning etc. Tomorrow is during the disaster, Wednesday is after and the clean up.

Today it's Carl Peterson, the coordinator of disaster management for Moreton Bay Regional Council in QLD; Warren Sharpe, the director of infrastructure services in Eurobodalla Shire Council, in NSW; and Angela Jones, infrastructure director for Richmond Valley Council in NSW.

Then Stuart McConnell, general manager of bushfire recovery for East Gippsland Shire Council; and Greg Georgopoulos, CEO of Kangaroo Island Council; and John Fernandez, project manager of same.

Hogan-Doran: "A thread emerging from the materials is an apparent mismatch about the expectations and capabilities of local government with regards to the natural disaster, and the reality."

Among the issues to be discussed are issues evacuating people from communities with one main access road; the difficulty of landscape-wide risk assessment; management of evacuation centres; difference between an evacuation centre and a community safer place; ways to share info.

On the issue of recovery, they'll talk about the difficulty of neighbouring shire councils who want to offer assistance but can't; delayed or complex funding arrangements; and the difficulty of managing recovery across multiple LGAs.

There were also issues around clean-up coordination and timing. QLD was in the recovery phase while NSW and Vic were still on fire, so there was no national focus on recovery. Issues in many areas about waste management, inc asbestos waste. Difficulty accessing some sites.

Some councils in some submissions say there should be federal, state and local disaster recovery plans in place BEFORE the disaster occurs.

Funds set up afterwards were ad hoc and confusing.

Ok this is wild. The sire of Dundas, in WA, did not qualify for any financial assistance to support the recovery or community or to support planning and preparation for future emergency events.

You may recall the shire of Dundas from that time the EYRE HIGHWAY WAS CUT FOR WEEKS.

I mean I know they didn't lose any houses but entire towns were cut off for ages and people were stranded at a roadhouse at the edge of the Nullarbor. Supplies couldn't get to Perth.

You would think this was an emergency event that we would want to plan for and avoid.

This royal commission has been a fun journey around the terrible internet of regional Australia.

We now have Glen Beckett, Mike Lollback and Doreen Erhart from the local government association of QLD, apparently calling in from under the sea.

You may notice that none of these names were on the list I tweeted earlier.

That's because I still find the witness schedule on the RC's absolutely terrible website, and I'm still not on the media mailing list despite being told several times that I was.

Erhart, the climate change and great barrier reef lead for the LGAQ, is talking about the QCoast2100 program which is intended to help coastal councils in QLD prepare for climate change related coastal hazard risks over the long term.

Started with a focus on sea level rise

The Queensland local government association made the point in its submission that there was confusion and inconsistency around the use of "watch and act" and "leave now" alerts.

"Watch and act and leave now were almost being simultaneously broadcast on different radios."

Mike, whose surname I am not 100% sure I have right, tells the commission that while "leave now" was a very clear message, "watch and act" was confusing, because it basically meant stay, but anxiously. "How do we act if we're staying? Shouldn't we be going if we're acting?"

"Council switchboards were being inundated with questions about what are we supposed to do, do we watch, do we act, do we leave or stay, do we defend, and it created that confusion about what people should be doing."

Glen Beckett says that there is supposed to be a nationally-consistent messaging and that's why 'watch and act' is used.

Beckett says that QLDers are well versed in disaster warning and language for floods and cyclones, "we are not however as experienced in bushfires."

Here's the thing: it kind of means stay, but it could mean leaving if that's what in your personal bushfire action plan. If you plan to leave you should leave before you get the leave now/emergency warning.

The Vic alerts say that, other states don't.
https://twitter.com/random_pest/status/1274876051169017856

I swear this isn't just parochial bias: Victoria is much better at the communication in fire alerts than other states.

This makes sense, because no other state has lost 173 people in one day.

There seems to be a massive resistance in fire agencies learning from other states.

Stuart McConnell from the East Gippsland shire council is the first witness this afternoon.

The East Gippsland shire council is 10% of Victoria. 75% of its land mass is public land, and it has a population of about 45,000.

The East Gippsland shire was impacted by the 2003 fires, the 2006-07 fires, fires in 2011, fires in 2018-18, and then this summer.

McConnell says they are "somewhat experienced in responding to bushfire."

They've also had floods in that time.

The 2019-20 fires were of a much larger scale. 56% of the land area of East Gippsland was burned, McConnell said.

"The impact of the fires is on the back of three years of drought."

Also, heaps of communities were cut off. The Princes Highway was closed for 37 days.

That happened to coincide with the peak tourism period. Businesses said they lost about 75% of their revenue through that period. Can only assume the other 25% was fireys buying pies.

East Gippsland has an annual slashing program, mainly focused on roadsides of council roads - so not arterial roads.

Most of the hazard reduction undertaken by councils is mowing, the program costs $500,000 per year.

McConnell is talking through their bushfire safety plan. It includes the identification of neighbourhood safer places. There are 12 of them in East Gippsland.

Also assembly areas and prospective sties for relief centres. Over summer they set one of those up in Delegate, NSW.

Delegate's outside the council area, obviously, so it wasn't listed as a potential relief centre site in the plan - although it was used in 2014 as well.

McConnell said they were not able to do all their slashing last Spring because the fire season was so intense, so early. They usually do their second slash in December - it was too high risk for that last year.

McConnell said council did seminars with tourism operations in the lead up to the fire season "to help them be aware of some of the issues around fire risk and preparedness".

(I spoke to a number of tourism operators in East Gippsland the last week of December. Absolutely none of them understood how dangerous the weather was, they all told me they had dealt with fire before.)