Former fire chief Shane Fitzsimmons says the summer bushfire season was “extraordinary” and exceeded experts’ worst fears.
Speaking at the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements on Wednesday, Mr Fitzsimmons described how the fire behaviour failed to match anything experts had predicted.
Mr Fitzsimmons said fire crews worked “without any meaningful break from the weather”, and where they had seen any frontal activity, which would traditionally bring rain or showers, it had displayed as “significant” dry lightning storms, causing “considerable new ignitions” instead of helping to contain existing fires.
“The fire behaviour and spread exceeded the latest modelling. It exceeded the worst-case scenario … we saw fire behaviour at 2 to 3am that you’d expect to see at 2-3pm, where traditional conditions are at their worst.”
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