Businesses, accommodation providers, local residents – all have fought long and hard to be heard that the service from Telstra in the seaside town is appalling.

We say Telstra here, as service with other mobile communication providers is non-existent. The same situation faces many locations in the Bega Valley Shire.

So the nearest mobile tower was among the first bits of infrastructure to go in Sunday’s bushfire – fair enough. However, with an inferno bearing down on the town in horrendous weather conditions, having residents tell us they were only informed about the evacuation by police and emergency services knocking on their doors is disgraceful.

The silver lining here – and it’s a shiny one – is that there has been no indication of any serious injuries or deaths as a result of the fire, a miraculous turn of events given the situation.

Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons says “something must’ve worked to keep everyone alive” with the RFS boss reporting SMS and landline alerts were sent to residents. 

However, from all accounts those alerts were received too close to the firefront’s arrival for comfort.

Mike Kelly says the federal government should “look at the lessons learnt” from Sunday’s below-par implementation of the emergency warning system.

Can we hope for action this time around? How many times/articles/editorials/discussions can one community raise on a topic before action is taken by our representatives in government?

Previous explanations (excuses?) for Tathra being left of any list of locations to receive blackspot funding is that it has “some service”. Not very much mind you, but some.

In February this year came long-awaited confirmation the town was scheduled to receive a new tower under round three of the federal mobile blackspot funding program. However, tenders for that haven’t even been called yet, and completion unlikely until at least 2019.

In a separate, but related matter, it was great to see Optus providing free mobile phone charging stations at the Bega evacuation centre this week.

One can only wonder why Telstra wasn’t the one to do so.

UPDATE (after going to print Tuesday night):

Credit where credit is due. Telstra has announced an assistance package for affected customers in Tathra and surrounds.

There’s also word it has delivered a mobile “cell on wheels” to Tathra which should be up and running on Wednesday.