NSW fire brigade pledges never to return to ACT
At least one NSW rural fire brigade say they will never return to Canberra
again to assist with fires.
Senior deputy captain Peter Holding from Harden says five tankers responded
to an urgent call for help on Saturday afternoon.
But he says they were assigned, along with six tankers from the Blue
Mountains, to a burnt out rural property south of Queanbeyan.
Mr Holding says they eventually got to Duffy in Canberra at 1:00am AEDT,
where they remained parked until daylight.
He refutes claims the fires were too intense to save homes, and blames
Emergency Services for failing to poor coordinate resources.
"It wasn't that hot that people couldn't move in the street... there were
firefighters there who reported their tankers had broken down so they took
the hoses off and ran down the street to the next hydrant.... now if it was
that bad they couldn't do that sort of thing," he said.
"So you were able to operate in the street... what happened was there
weren't enough tankers in those streets to stop adjoining houses catching
fire.
"Why are we sitting out in the middle of a burnt area while that's going on?"
http://abc.net.au/news/justin/nat/newsnat-20jan2003-65.htm
