The investigation into last month’s fire found “significant shortcomings” in the way Victoria’s environment department carries out planned burn-offs and communicates with the community.

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The fire broke containment lines in warm and windy weather, destroying four homes and burning more than 3000 hectares of farmland and state forest.

The report found the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning’s (DELWP) risk assessment did not adequately consider the “broader forested environment”, technical and operational challenges and the potential social impacts.

Emergency Services Commissioner Craig Lapsley answers questions from angry Lancefield locals. Photo: AAP

A risk assessment tool rated the likelihood of an escape from the burn as “very likely”.

“There is evidence resources were minimal and based on everything going according to plan,” the report said.

“This was exacerbated over coming days by failing to adequately scale up when the situation deteriorated, breaches of boundaries occurred and fire weather forecasts indicated changing and unfavourable conditions.

“Interviews also revealed that there is a resignation by staff that district resources and budgets are tight and this may result in resources at a burn being ‘thin’.”

DELWP was also criticised for failing to properly communicate with the community.

The department secretary of DELWP, Adam Fennessy, apologised to local residents at a community briefing, saying it had let them down.

“It threatened you, it threatened your property, it threatened you as a community and we let you down. We don’t ever want this to happen and it happened,” he said.

The State Government has also accepted the recommendations of the report on its approach to fuel reduction burns.

The annual five per cent target, recommended by the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday fires, will be dumped and a new risk-based strategy will be adopted.

Retired bushfire scientist David Packham said scrapping the target was dangerous and simply a case of the state pandering to extreme green groups.

He said the burning target should be above 10 per cent for Victoria’s fuel loads to be anywhere near manageable, for what he said was the worst bushfire condition the state has been in for 30,000 to 50,000 years

– ABC