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Bushfire fears raised in Tasmania

The Tasmanian Fire Service admits its capacity to fight bushfires could be compromised by the big changes in Tasmania’s forest industry. There is concern some forests could be become a high fire risk with the restructure of Forestry Tasmania and the collapse of timber company Gunns. Source: ABC

Firefighters are worried they might lose experienced personnel and fire fighting resources from within the organisations.

The acting deputy fire chief Andrew Comer told ABC local radio it will put more pressure on the Fire Service.

“The main issues for us would be the loss of experience, personnel that might leave the state as a result of that restructure,” he said.

“So we would have people in forestry that would lend valuable support to incident management teams, participate in firefighting on the ground and any loss of those kind of resources obviously would have an impact on this service on our service.”