Fire fatalities: FRV excludes deliberately lit fires

FRV is excluding a significant source of fire deaths from its reporting, as the United Firefighters Union pushes to take over more CFA territory.

Fire Rescue Victoria excludes deaths from deliberately lit fires from its fatality statistics, such as those of Abbey Forrest, Indi Sohal and their baby Ivy.

Fire Rescue Victoria is under-reporting fire-related fatalities within metropolitan Melbourne and its regional town territories by excluding deaths from deliberately lit fires.

While the CFA recorded all forms of 16 fire-related fatalities among half the Victorian population it protects, FRV recorded just 12 in the 12 months to June 30 this year.

A CFA spokeswoman said “all fire-related deaths are reported to the Fire Services Implementation Monitor (Niall Blair), regardless of determined cause of fire”.

The CFA has slowly been losing more ground to FRV. Picture: Mark Wilson

But after failing to provide any fatality data for the past two years, FRV finally released a number last month, based on what it termed “preventable fire-related fatalities – which excludes fatalities from deliberately lit fires”.

Fire fatality numbers are crucial to comparing the United Firefighters Union dominated FRV service with the volunteer-run CFA, given the Andrews Labor Government is undertaking a review into fire service boundaries.

“It’s critically important data that everyone needs to report in the same way,” Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria chief executive Adam Barnett said.

Just how critical was evidenced during the Andrews government original decision to strip the CFA of 38 stations and staff to merge with the MFB on July 1, 2020.

At the time Premier Daniel Andrews and his former deputy James Merlino repeatedly highlighted poor CFA response times during their push to merge the fire services.

Now the government’s Fire District Review Panel is examining extending FRV’s territory even further, by assessing community risk, based in large part on “the fire services’ capacity and capability to suppress the fire hazard”.

At the same time the United Firefighters Union has run a Ready for Anything campaign, which warns regional Victorians covered by the CFA they are “NOT located in an area that is protected by FRV Professional Career Firefighters”.

FRV has already been exposed for failing to report fatalities, until The Weekly Times raised the issue last month and it finally released a figure of 12 “preventable” fire-related fatalities.

In his September report Mr Blair said “this is the first time FRV have reported on preventable fire related fatalities in their year two outcomes framework”, which excludes those resulting from deliberately lit fires.

FRV’s exclusion means it would not count the December 2020 deaths of Abigail Forrest, her partner Inderpal Singh and their three-week-old daughter Ivy at Point Cook in their fatality reports, as the fire was deliberately lit.