Fiskville closure a hollow victory

THE announcement that the Fiskville CFA training hub will be closed due to toxic contamination is overdue, but remains a hollow victory.

Ruth Lamperd, Herald Sun journalist. HWT staff. Headshot.

FOR three years the Fiskville Training College has been under attack. A site like that, with dangerously dirty land and water, could never expect an easy ride.

Some of the damage was inflicted from outside the CFA. But the worst assault was an inside job — CFA management did Fiskville a terrible disservice. For decades, toxic contamination at the site was not put on the table for all to see. Reports were commissioned, compiled and ignored. Semi-regular testing took place of water with which fireys were saturated days on end. But when it failed basic health standards, nothing was done. It took Freedom of Information searches and fearful CFA staff at risk of the sack to produce the evidence that could later show how bad things were there. Nobody at the site was warned. None of the fireys was told. The staff had no idea.

In December 2011, former CFA chief officer Brian Potter, who was an unwitting part of the contamination problem in the early days, told his story to the Herald Sun. He believed he was dying from illnesses caused by the toxic chemicals they had burned there. At the time he was concerned mostly for the firefighters constantly exposed to cancer-causing chemicals in their line of work. Fiskville was an example of a bigger problem. Too many people who’d lived and worked there over the years were dying from cancers.

He was not to know that the legacy of those maverick training days of “if it burns, we’ll burn it” still lurked. It rested as sludge in the bottom of dams that held water firefighters trained with. It seeped into the ground after leaking toxic chemical drums eroded at the training hub.

The MFB pulled its firefighters from further training at Fiskville when the Herald Sun exposed dam water contamination.

How the CFA management had thought it was safe is beyond comprehension. And how WorkSafe, which investigated the site for years, could find nothing on which to take decisive action is equally as incredible. Yesterday, the State Government moved on the WorkSafe management and demanded they resign.

The CFA switched to mains water to “put at rest” fireys’ minds and to enable training at Fiskville to go ahead unimpeded. That town water fed into tanks erected beside the burning pad. And in the two years since that switch, there had been no testing of the water in the tanks. That’s where the latest toxic contamination has been found.

Why did they not test it before now? Well, CFA management believed mains water would be above reproach. They assumed it was clear. It was not. The era of “assumption” must now surely be over in the CFA. That era ended at least two decades ago for every other industry involving risky chemicals or contaminated land. There is no excuse to compromise workplace health and safety. Too much is known about potentially harmful chemicals to take risks.

The CFA management, under the now departed leadership of Mick Bourke, slammed this newspaper’s reporting of the problem. It criticised the critics and rallied its troops by labelling the attack political. In reality, the CFA and the volunteer organisation that it funds spent their efforts giving false assurance to dedicated firefighters who gave up their time learning how to fight fires to help the community. That is the greatest of sins.

On Monday night, new CFA chief executive Michael Wooten expressed his guarded opinion that the banned firefighting foam PFOS — linked to serious health problems — was no longer used on site.

In closing Fiskville the CFA has finally accepted a no-risk approach. Whether it was under pressure from the new Labor Government to shut down or whether it did it of its own volition is irrelevant now. It is unacceptable that it has taken so long for this to happen.

The Joy report commissioned by the CFA after the Herald Sun first exposed the cancer scare was to investigate what went on up to 1999. That in itself was either a serious lapse in judgment or an attempt to cover up problems they knew were still there. Many of the 60 people who lived and worked at Fiskville until yesterday morning certainly believed the CFA assurances. They are reportedly angry that the site has closed. It was popular part-time work for locals in the district.

There is no doubt they were viewing Fiskville wearing CFA-issue rose-coloured glasses. If they’d understood fully the progression of expert consultants who recommended a massive clean-up, perhaps they might not have felt so safe at work.

The closure of Fiskville is a hollow victory. Too much damage has already been done, to both the CFA’s reputation and the people whose health has been risked through exposure. But with the closure of its doors, most likely for good, the Fiskville contamination debacle ends and the toxic exposure chapter closes. Exposure of innocent workers and firefighters ends there.

RUTH LAMPERD HAS WON AWARDS FOR HER COVERAGE OF THE FISKVILLE STORY, WHICH SHE BROKE IN DECEMBER 2011

Twitter: @ruthlamperd

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