**A judicial hearing into last year’s deadly bushfires in southern Australia has heard that the authorities should buy back land from worried residents.**These are people who have re-built homes in high risk areas but now want to move somewhere safer.
Lawyers have said that the Victoria state government was too hasty in allowing people who lost their homes to return to vulnerable bush land.
The fire of 2009 in parts of Victoria left 173 people dead.
In the aftermath of the Black Saturday bushfires Australia’s political leaders promised that devastated communities would be rebuilt “brick by brick”.
Rebuilding controversy
Such bold statements were meant to boost the fragile confidence of a region that had endured catastrophic losses.
Lawyers at a judicial inquiry into the disaster believe that both state and federal officials acted impulsively by allowing residents to rebuild their homes in areas prone to extreme bushfires.
They have presented details of a controversial “retreat and resettlement” policy.
It would see the authorities buy back land from homeowners who now regret returning to live in vulnerable parts of the Victorian countryside.
Melinda Richards, a barrister who is advising the bushfire inquiry, says residents who want to leave should receive financial help.
“Counsel assisting in our submissions are critical of the early reflexive commitments made by the state and Commonwealth governments to rebuild these communities brick by brick, without any strategic consideration of how that might be done - without simply putting people back in the same path of the danger that they’d just escaped,” Ms Richards said.
However, the Victorian government believes the buy-back proposal would be unworkable and too expensive.
The Royal Commission into the bushfire tragedy was set up to investigate the causes of the blazes in February last year, while looking at ways to better protect life and property in the future.
Its final report is due in July.This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.