CFA ignored fire prediction model: analyst
CFA ignored fire prediction model: analyst
2 October 2009
published by www.abc.net.au
Australia — A former Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) analyst has revealed the agency passed up an opportunity to develop a working fire prediction model six years ago.
The CFA has previously told the state’s Bushfires Royal Commission it lacked enough staff to properly predict bushfire behaviour on Black Saturday.
A former analyst, Ron Shamir, says he developed a computer model in 2003, that could easily predict bushfire movements.
But he says his superiors were not interested.
“I was getting certainly no formal response,” he said.
“No offers to make this into a formal project, no offers to invest any resources in it, and that even includes myself as a resource just to keep working on it.”
Mr Shamir says his bosses refused to implement the model.
“I found that it didn’t matter how many demonstrations I conducted, they all ended up with the same outcome, which is that I’d hear nothing at the end of the day.”
