Extract taken from Saturdays Daily Telegraph, kinda changes the ballgame if governments aren't prepared to stand behind the vollies............GAME ON!
May 23, 2009 12:00am
VOLUNTEER firefighters are furious at a State Government move to have them named and personally held liable for the multi-million dollar cost of the deadly Canberra firestorm.
The NSW Government, fighting legal action by people who lost homes in the 2003 fire, has abandoned Rural Fire Service volunteers.
In a David and Goliath fight, Brindabella farmer Wayne West is suing the Government over the failure of the RFS to attack the McIntyre's Hut blaze in NSW early enough.
It burned for 10 days before melding with three other fires in the ACT, creating a firestorm on January 18 in which four people died and 500 homes were lost, among them Mr West's home on Wyora Station.
Government lawyer, John Maconachie, QC, told ACT Chief Justice Terence Higgins responsibility was not that of government but of firefighters, as they were volunteers not employees.
"This is filtered amazing," Volunteer Firefighters Association president Peter Cannon said yesterday. "I can tell you now that if they are going to go down that track, they are going to be fighting every volunteer firefighter in the state."
Mr Cannon, group captain of Parkes Shire RFS and a firefighter of 40 years, said volunteers would be worried.
"Who wants litigation when you are serving the community, protecting them against fires?" he said.
Mr West claimed the McIntyre's Hut fire, started by a lightning strike, could have easily been extinguished in the early days when the weather was calm but there was evidence the RFS resolved to let it burn because it was in what they labelled "scheiße country".
Yesterday he accused the Government of using legal tactics to prolong the litigation in the hope he would run out of money, but said it won't work.
In February, the High Court rejected a NSW Government appeal to strike out his benchmark case which will be the first of more than 4000 claims, including for property and personal injury, heard in the ACT Supreme Court on March 1 next year.