The bushfire inquiry report tabled this week highlights the need to listen to the people who know the country, because they are often the people first on the truck when smoke appears.

For too long, many local firies have felt decisions were made somewhere else, by people with maps but not always the memory of how wind moves through a valley, where a track really ends, which farm gate will be open at midnight, and the households that will need a knock on the door.

That is why the committee’s recommendation to better use local knowledge in incident control centres matters.

In regional Victoria, CFA brigades are made up of families, neighbours and workmates, often with generations of service behind them.

The report rightly recognises that those voices were heard during this inquiry.

Firefighters and communities affected by last summer’s fires were given a say, and the findings show their evidence helped shape the recommendations.

The failures in telecommunications and power infrastructure cannot be allowed to sit in another report until the next bad season.

When mobile towers fail, warnings fail, crews lose contact, and families lose the information they need to make life and death decisions.

Mandatory backup capacity for mobile towers is not a luxury for bushfire country, it is basic resilience.

Here in the North East we know what it’s like to hear the sirens in the middle of the night or wake up to smoke-filled skies.

But we also know the value of local people stepping up when it counts.

The state must now show it has listened by changing the systems that count.