By Tanalee Smith
The Associated Press
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YEA, Australia — Australia vowed to push through stalled plans for a national fire warning system on Thursday, though questions remain over whether coordinated alerts could have saved lives in the country’s worst-ever wildfires.
Police released two men who had been taken in for questioning after they were reported acting suspiciously in an area burned out by last weekend’s fires.
“There were no offenses detected,” said a statement from Victoria police.
Authorities say some of the fires that ravaged Victoria state last weekend and killed at least 181 people were the result of arson. Officials said the death toll could exceed 200.
The high toll have increased the urgency for a nationwide warning system, which has been snarled by privacy laws and bickering between state officials over funding for years. But the country’s worst fires in history have added new urgency.
Attorney General Robert McClelland said a plan for a telephone alert system had been before the government since 2004, but that state governments had not endorsed it and that changes were required to federal privacy laws that bar private numbers from being handed out.
McClelland said he backs sending a barrage of automated warnings to all phones in an area where there is an emergency.
Australia’s largest telecommunications company, Telstra Corp., said it could install such a system but had been blocked by the federal privacy laws, said managing director of public policy David Quilty.
“What the early warning system does is it provides geographically targeted messages to phone numbers,” Quilty told ABC radio. “It can provide them to both fixed or home and business phone numbers as well as to mobile phone numbers and it can provide those messages to phone numbers regardless of which phone company that the customer is with.”
McClelland said another reason the system had not been implemented was because officials had to be sure it would not crash communications systems used by emergency services. However, he said the legislation to pave the way for the system was now “ready to go.”
“Clearly a warning system would be useful,” McClelland said.
Saturday’s fires moved and changed direction at speeds of up to 60 mph (100 kph), and it is not clear if a phone warning system would have saved lives.
Officials blame the dramatically high death toll partly on the number of people who appeared to have waited until they saw the fast-moving blazes coming before trying to flee. Many bodies have been found in burned-out cars or on the roadside.
“In so many instances in this fire there was no real capacity to do anything,” Victoria police chief Christine Nixon said Thursday when asked if a warning system would have helped.
Bruce Esplin, head of the Victorian Emergency Services, said a national warning system for fires, floods and potential terrorist attacks was overdue.
“I think it’s taken too long,” he said. “I think we need to work as a country, not as separate states and territories, and it’s time we did that.”
Thousands of mostly volunteer firefighters were still battling more than a dozen fires across the state Thursday, a day after some residents of scorched towns were allowed returned home.
Arson specialists say they have concluded that the fires had six separate sources, four of which were not suspicious. Foul play was suspected in the fire that destroyed Marysville and they are convinced another deadly fire, known as the Churchill fire, was arson.
Wildfire arson carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison, but authorities have said they will bring murder charges if they can. A murder conviction carries a maximum life sentence.
Rain Wednesday night eased several fire alerts, but residents in some areas were warned to remain vigilant as large fires continue to rage.
Authorities sealed off some towns for the grim task of collecting bodies from collapsed buildings and to prevent residents from disturbing potential crime scenes, including Marysville.
Brumby said there could be 50 to 100 deaths in Marysville, a town of just 500 people before the fires. Eight residents have been confirmed dead.
More than 400 fires ripped through Victoria on Saturday, destroying more than 1,000 houses, leaving some 5,000 people homeless, and scorching 1,100 square miles (2,850 square kilometers) of land.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said a memorial service would be organized for a national day of mourning, though the date has not yet been picked.