By Melissa Grant
BUNYIP Primary School principal Ted Lease has backed the State Government’s plans to shut down schools in high risk fire areas on catastrophic fire danger rating days.
Mr Lease says the plan would give parents and staff greater certainty in the event of a catastrophic fire.
“Parents will automatically know that a Code Red day means school closure,” he said.
“Then families can sit down and make a choice about whether they are going to stay or leave.”
Bunyip Primary School is likely to be listed among the government schools and children’s services that will be forced to close.
Premier John Brumby, who made the announcement at Bunyip Primary School on Thursday, said many of the schools were located in the 52 areas which fire authorities identified as being at high-risk this fire season.
A list of schools would be finalised in the coming fortnight, Mr Brumby said.
Bunyip Primary School shut for three days during the Bunyip Ridge blaze which threatened the area on Black Saturday.
Mr Lease said he was notified on that Sunday that the school was to close – a move backed by the school community.
“Parents supported the school closures because they felt it was safer for the children,” he said.
Mr Brumby said it was important for all levels of government, schools and the CFA to work together to ensure Victoria was as fire ready as possible.
“Our government has adopted the new nationally agreed Fire Danger Rating scale to help individuals and communities to understand the fire risk in their area on any given day,” he said.
“We have taken the decision that on a day which is declared a Code Red (Catastrophic) Fire Danger Rating, the safest option for schools identified as being at high risk this fire season is to close and we want clear systems in place for the fire season so that every school community that may be affected is fully informed.”
Like Mr Brumby, Mr Lease said it was important that people didn’t become complacent.
He said the Bunyip Primary School community had learnt a lot from Black Saturday and would implement changes this fire season.
“We thought that we were ready,” he said.
“But we found out this year that we needed to make some changes.”
Mr Lease said students would now assemble in the school hall, rather than the oval in the event of fire.
“Our evacuation strategy was always to take students on oval … the oval had no green grass – all of it was dead and we are surrounded by cypress trees,” he said.
“If we took children out, we could be surrounded by falling embers.”
If a Code Red fire danger rating is declared, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development will issue a list of planned school closures immediately after receiving notification of the rating from the Bureau of Meteorology.
