Enquiry into bushfires is underway

[Kingswood]

The Enquiry into the Black Saturday bushfires is underway.

Some links:
Ash Wednesday warnings convinced me to leave: witness
No warnings for Strathewen, commission hears

I think a big problem with the fires was the inability to communicate to the public the severity of the fire conditions on the day in a simple and concise manner. There were only meaningless words like extreme. Trouble is, "extreme" can mean weather conditions that rate maybe 50, or 300 as Black Saturday did.

I think we would be better served if we had a simple numerical system, similar to that which is used in the USA to rate tornadoes, and used in the USA and Australia to rate hurricanes and cyclones. People would then know that Category 5 Fire Weather is "extreme". If the scale was open-ended, hearing about "Category 30" fire weather would REALLY communicate the severity.