This photo shows the start of the Orroral Valley Fire and was taken from the helicopter that accidentally started the devastating blaze. Photo: Department of Defence via ABC.
An army crew’s failure to quickly report how their helicopter started a fire in the Orroral Valley after landing for an unplanned “whizz break” was an “error of judgement”, the ACT’s chief coroner has found.
What would become the Orroral Valley Fire decimated southern ACT and the Bumbalong area of NSW over five weeks from 27 January 2020, including burning more than 82,000 ha of the Namadgi National Park.
While no lives were lost, there was a major loss of flora and fauna, wide environmental damage, damage to First Nations’ cultural sites and significant damage to landowners’ properties.
The fire was started by heat from a searchlight on an army MRH-90 Taipan helicopter called ANGEL21 after it made an unplanned landing because one of its crew requested a “whizz break”.
The then-ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury chose not to launch a coronial inquiry into the incident, so ACT Chief Coroner Lorraine Walker instigated one herself then presented her findings on Friday (13 June).
The crew of ANGEL21 were carrying out reconnaissance during the Black Summer bushfire season when one of them asked for a toilet break, the chief coroner said.
She said within one minute of landing, a crew member noticed a fire had started in the grass and the crew immediately understood it had been caused by a searchlight.
They took off within seconds, with the downdraft from the helicopter accelerating the fire, then arrived at Canberra Airport 17 minutes later.
The crew didn’t report the fact they started a fire to anyone during the flight and only reported it after landing at the airport. They didn’t report the exact location of the fire to the appropriate authorities until about 35 to 45 minutes after it began.
An observer at the Mount Tennent Fire Tower and a resident in the suburb of Kambah reported the fire when ANGEL21 was mid-flight, so the NSW Rural Fire Service was in the process of responding before the crew even landed. However, these firefighters at first had to guess the precise location of the blaze.
A water-bombing helicopter heads into a flank of the Orroral Valley Fire in 2020. Photo: Michael Weaver.
Chief Coroner Walker said the situation the helicopter’s crew found themselves in would have likely been very frightening and ensuring the crew’s safety would have been the focus for the captain and pilot.
“However, just as one would expect any ordinary citizen to report a significant fire to the relevant authorities, particularly in a time of heightened risk, as participants in [the fire-fighting operation] it was incumbent on all [Australian Defence Force] personnel to do so,” she said.
“It must have been obvious to any thinking person that a delay in reporting the fire could potentially impact the capacity of the relevant organisations to respond to it with all the obvious risks and actual consequences which may, and in this case did, flow from an uncontrolled fire.
“It is not plausible, despite the highly stressful situation, that no consideration was given to the significance of the fact that the actions of this crew, inadvertent and unanticipated though they were, had just caused a major fire.”
Chief Coroner Walker did find the “unfortunate delay” in reporting the fire had no significant impact on the response to it.
“Failure to report the fire earlier, and failure of the Commonwealth to accept the overarching need to do so, does raise an issue of public safety,” she said.
She also said there had been an unlearned lesson in the past because the heat from a Black Hawk helicopter landing light started a grass fire in 2013, but the warning generated by this incident was not replicated for the flight manuals of other types of aircraft beyond the Black Hawks.
She made a number of recommendations for the Defence force and ACT Government.
Lawyer Sam Tierney said “grave errors of judgement” led to the Orroral Valley Fire. Photo: Albert McKnight.
After her findings were delivered, Sam Tierney of Ken Cush & Associates, who represented 11 households from Bumbalong and southern ACT impacted by the fire, said it appeared there had been “systemic failures” that led to the “terrible, tragic outcome”.
“It’s abundantly clear that some grave errors of judgement led to this fire and the chief coroner has done a superb job in making recommendations that hopefully ensure this never happens again,” he said.
“I think the most important parts of the findings are that there was a lack of certainty and clarity by both the ACT and the Commonwealth about the true circumstances of this fire and how it came to start.
“The chief coroner has now cast a light on something which the ACT Attorney-General [Shane Rattenbury] made huge efforts to ensure did not come into the public domain via a coronial review.”
Mr Tierney said his clients had brought compensation proceedings against the Commonwealth Government, which was yet to finalise them.
When asked why the ACT Government was resistant to the inquiry in the first place, Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Services Marisa Paterson said there had been concern it could impact the relationships between the ACT and Commonwealth Governments as well as the ADF.
“I think it’s really important that we maintain those close relationships,” she said.
Dr Paterson said she ultimately did not think the inquiry had risked the relationships. She thanked the coroner for her findings and said the government would review the recommendations.
When Mr Rattenbury was asked for a response, he said: “As there was no question over what started the fire, it was the government’s view that we would not require the coroner to initiate an inquiry”.
“I welcome the findings from their self-initiated inquiry, and the recommendations that I hope will prevent any shadow of a repeat of the environmental catastrophe that unfolded in Namadgi in 2020,” he said.
Original Article published by Albert McKnight on Region Canberra.
