Communications issues continue to plague the Tasman Peninsula 20 years after the Port Arthur massacre.
In April 1996, after Martin Bryant began indiscriminately shooting visitors at the Port Arthur historic site, phone lines were clogged and emergency service organisations could not communicate with each other because they used different radio systems.
Nearly a decade later, the State Government provided $1.5 million to establish a whole-of-government radio network, but the project reached a stalemate because the police, the SES, ambulance service and firefighters could not agree on a technical solution.
It meant, during the bushfire crisis of 2013, peninsula residents were left in the dark about the approaching flames due to unreliable mobile reception, power cuts and incompatible emergency radio systems.
“We didn’t know where the fire was, all we knew was there were heaps of people arriving here to be sheltered,” said SES unit manager Ian Kingston.
“We didn’t know if the fire was past Dunalley or past Eaglehawk Neck.”
It was a case of deja-vu for Mr Kingston, who was working security at Port Arthur at the time of the massacre and experienced first-hand the frustration of the communications failure there.
