THE CFA has been accused of blocking city firefighters from helping fight the horrific blazes that burnt Victoria and claimed 208 lives. Leaked emails accuse Country Fire Authority (CFA) management of blocking Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) and CFA professional firefighters, and incompetently handling the fires.
The United Firefighters Union (UFU) will tell the Royal Commission into the fires that the CFA panicked and was ill-prepared despite knowing conditions would be the worst in Victoria's history.
The taxpayer-funded firefighters, who are better trained than volunteers, say overseas and interstate crews have been flown in while up to 1200 of them were available but have sat around during, and since, the savage blazes of February 7.
The CFA and MFB deny the claims and say the firefighters and equipment were used "appropriately".
The union claims CFA managers, or incident controllers, blocked MFB crews from fighting fires at Wandong and near Alexandra.
The incident controller at Alexandra told the MFB crew: "Over my dead body are we gonna use you," union secretary Peter Marshall said.
"The MFB commander went back and briefed the troops and said 'This is the attitude, they don't wanna use us'," he said.
"At Wandong, an MFB taskforce was not deployed by the CFA incident controller because of parochial issues ... when they actually got in there the CFA said: 'Where have you been? ... we've been waiting for you for ages, we needed you'.
"This is dynamite. It's hard to say it cost lives but resources that have been paid for by the community in the form of fire appliances and personnel sat idle while people lost their houses and indeed their life."
The UFU has been swamped with emails from members frustrated at not being sent to fight the fires.
One says: "I am probably just another one of hundreds who are totally frustrated at the inability of the CFA to utilise its own career personnel. I look at the news footage and see volunteers dead on their feet ... we are sitting on our arses."
One paid CFA firefighter said he was one of about six professionals who sat doing nothing at a station in Melbourne's outer north when the fire started.
CFA chief officer Russell Rees said all firefighters were used appropriately.
"There's no question the MFB were used appropriately and are still being used in specialised areas such as victim identification," he said.
MFB spokesman Simon Breer said the brigade had provided up to 1000 personnel and he did not believe there was a problem with its involvement.
