LAST week's bushfires reignited frustrations and anger that ABC coverage is not wide enough and most regions are without adequate mobile phone coverage.
Bridgetown resident Richard Lamb failed in recent campaigns to get the ABC to extend its coverage and ensure Radio National and warning alerts reach residents.
Similarly campaigns led by Balingup's Peta Townsing for mobile phone antennas have fallen on deaf ears.
Coverage, including the ABC, drops out immediately as one leaves the eastern and western exits of Bridgetown hub. Residents would require satellite dishes to access the ABC. Internet coverage does not reach all of Bridgetown and most of the Bridgetown-Greenbushes Shire.
It was the just-out-of-town residents, whose ire had been raised by the inaccessibility to up-to-the-minute information the ABC can provide. Those with mobile phones living on out-of-town properties, without mobile phone coverage, were not able to receive text alerts from the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES).
Residents had to drive to emergency town meetings to find out what was going on.
There were some 400 residents at the Bridgetown Recreation Centre emergency meeting convened by the shire and various authorities.
Bridgetown residents will continue to be isolated during emergencies after Mr Lamb's campaign to secure ABC coverage failed.
Federal member for O'Connor Tony Crook led the campaign on behalf of Bridgetown residents. He met ABC management and sought intervention from the federal government.
However, the federal government refused to provide funding for reception for adequate internet, mobile and the new ABC emergencychannel.
Mr Crook said the federal government had "passed the buck" on assisting Bridgetown.
Previously, the Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, said there were funds to assist with ABC Radio National in Bridgetown or surrounding regions.
Marta Sandberg lives on the outskirts of Bridgetown and within the area where the bushfire risk alerts were raised.
Ms Sandberg has no internet coverage. "It is strange I live so close to town but don't have internet coverage," she said.
Bridgetown resident Trevor Woodward, whose house was damaged during the 2003 Boxing Day fire, said the government's decision smacks of money before people.
"That's amazing for them to say they have no funds when they spend on so many other non-essential non-life-threatening things," he said.
Mr Crook coordinated a huge petition response from Bridgetown residents to the ABC and met with the ABC's state director Geoff Duncan in a bid to have the ABC provide comprehensive coverage to Bridgetown residents. He then sought assistance from Mr Conroy's office.
A letter from the minister noted that the ABC provided a local radio service (6BR) on 1044AM from the broadcast site in Bridgetown.
"The ABC also provides digital and analog television services in Bridgetown," the letter said.
The ABC advised after the November 10, 2011, meeting it did not have the funds to extend Radio National to Bridgetown.
Mr Conroy said in his letter the ABC could only consider Radio National broadcasts to Bridgetown if funding became available and it "would need to be considered in the context of competing priorities across the ABC's transmission network".