The Victorian Fire Services Commissioner says "significant work" has taken place to improve the Country Fire Authority's website, after it malfunctioned during Friday's heatwave.
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Fire Services Commissioner Craig Lapsley said he was confident the website would suitably handle high volumes of traffic this week, with temperatures tipped to soar and severe fire danger warnings predicted.
The CFA's website and smartphone app received more than 12 million hits during a 12-hour period on Friday, causing it to slow down and freeze.
"Lessons learned from Friday are significant and have not gone un-noticed," Mr Lapsley said.
"We've done technical work-arounds and [found] solutions to increase the capability of our website to give Victoria what it deserves."
Emergency Services Minister Peter Ryan denied claims by the opposition that the website's struggles were due to CFA budget cuts. He labelled the claims as a "lazy, slack, irrelevant, cheap political point" and said there was no proof the two issues were linked.
And despite no digital radio network for emergency services, Mr Ryan said fire authorities were coping "very well" this summer with 11,500 new digital radios for crew members.
"The development of the total system is continuing and that will be ongoing," he said.
Meanwhile, 64 Victorian fire services personnel have flown to Tasmania to help local crews battle Australia's worst bushfires since Black Saturday in 2009.
Tasmania's Acting Premier, Bryan Green, contacted the Victorian government on Saturday to make a formal request for assistance.
Mr Ryan said members from the CFA, Metropolitan Fire Brigade, State Emergency Service, Department of Sustainability and Environment and Parks Victoria will return home on Friday.
"In the weeks following the devastation of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, Tasmania, along with other states, answered our request for assistance by sending personnel to help with the aftermath. As Tasmania now faces serious bushfires, we are ready to help them in their time of need,'' Mr Ryan said.
Mr Lapsley said the deployment won't impact potential firefighting efforts in Victoria this week, with only members from lower-risk fire districts sent to Tasmania.
"We don't have fires of any significance in the state at this point in time," Mr Lapsley said.
"It was a calculated decision … we have up to 8000 people on any one day able to fight fires, so it's a small percentage of our crews that are leaving the state.''
smh.com.au
