By Jason Om
ABC Premium News
INVERBRACKIE, Australia — Two former emergency chiefs have criticised the Federal Government’s plan to put hundreds of asylum seekers in a bushfire zone in South Australia.
When summer starts in December, up to 400 people will move into a detention facility at Inverbrackie in the Adelaide Hills.
The ex-firefighting chiefs told AM they were worried about the risk it posed and one of them dismissed as a stupid idea teaching asylum seekers about bushfire safety.
In a new country with a new language, the asylum seekers are likely to have no idea how to respond to an Australian bushfire.
The Immigration Department says the Country Fire Service (CFS) in SA will try to teach them.
But former SA bushfire chief Peter Schwerdtfeger thinks that is fanciful.
Mr Schwerdtfeger was the head of the Country Fire Service board during the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires.
He is now a professor in meteorology at Flinders University in Adelaide.
“I think it’s highly dubious. That part of the country is not as densely timbered of course as the central Mount Lofty Ranges, but it’s still an area where in summertime fire can be a problem,” he said.
The Immigration Department has met officials from the CFS and South Australia Police to discuss the plan to move the asylum seekers into 83 now-vacant defence force houses next to the Woodside army base.
An immigration official told AM the CFS would teach the detainees about ‘stay or go’ policy and how to evacuate the area safely if needed.
But Mr Schwerdtfeger remains sceptical.
“I think it largely depends on the language and comprehension standards of these people,” he said.
“I think the South Australian bushfire authorities they’re still largely volunteers, they probably have better things at that time than to run environmental comprehension classes in what is ... rapidly approaching as a potentially very dangerous time of the year.”
He said the Immigration Department needed to put their thinking caps on again.
Howard McBeth was the chief operations officer at the CFS from 1986 to 1994.
He says even some residents in the Adelaide Hills are lax about preparing for bushfires and he wonders how the asylum seekers can be expected to be prepared.
“To expect that these poor people are going to have a level of understanding of what is likely to occur and what they should do in the event of something occurring is pretty outrageous,” he said.
“Obviously people who’ve come to this part of Australia at the beginning of fire danger season are not going to understand the severity of what could occur without a significant amount of education and training.”
He said such preparation could take days or weeks for authorities and the Federal Government needed to give serious thought to the matter.
South Australian Premier Mike Rann told State Parliament this week there will be plans to manage emergencies.
But questions remain about how the asylum seekers will be moved on catastrophic bushfire risk days.
The Country Fire Service declined to speak to AM.
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