Waroona-Yarloop fires - one year on: How this disaster changed how we fight fires

The questions began before the flames were even out.

Firefighters who thought they had seen it all had seen nothing like it, and they were the first to ask what had gone wrong.

One morning there was a bushfire near Dwellingup – nothing exceptional – then hours later Yarloop was destroyed and Mandurah’s volunteer marine rescue service was evacuating Preston Beach by boat, almost 70 kilometres away.

And a year on, the 2016 Waroona-Yarloop is still raising questions.

Volunteer firefighters from Waroona, many who are farmers, still want to know how the fires made it so far so fast.

Yarloop residents feel they were not given adequate warning before their town was razed, and are still searching for answers. They still ask if the two men who died that night could have been saved if the town was specifically added to the emergency warnings before the fires hit.

Residents of the fire-ravaged community also wanted to know why their water supplies dried up during the blaze.

The inquiry conducted by the state government in the aftermath of the disaster tried to answer all these questions, and has made sweeping recommendations to change the way fires are fought.

The inquiry report detailed the catastrophic conditions faced by firefighters, including fire fronts moving at 100 kilometres an hour.

Premier Colin Barnett has pledged to set up a rural fire service, the key proposal of Euan Ferguson, the experienced fire chief who conducted the report.

His report emphasised the importance of local knowledge and experience of volunteer crews in fighting bushfires.

Although this was obvious to anyone on the ground, there has always been tension between the career firefighters – experts in their field – and the volunteers who know the conditions and the terrain in which they battle blazes. These are the men and the women on the front line, and when the new service is put into place, they will be the ones in command.

“The state's volunteer firefighters do a magnificent job and their expertise in fighting bush fires needs to be better utilised,” Mr Barnett said.

“The state government will establish a Rural Fire Service as either a separate agency or sub-department of the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES).”

Many of Mr Ferguson's recommendations were being implemented before the 2017 bushfire season including a $2.8 million critical messaging system to provide advice on fire danger ratings and total fire bans.

A new Office of Emergency Management was being established.

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