More than 75 brigade captains, senior deputy captains, group captains and senior staff from the NSW RFS Illawarra Sutherland Team met on Wednesday, October 11, for a pre-season briefing ahead of what’s projected to be a fire-prone summer.
Volunteers across 32 brigades travelled from as far afield as Kurnell and Foxground to meet at the central hub of Helensburgh Volunteer Rural Fire Brigade’s station to discuss their plans should a fire start in Sutherland Shire and Illawarra bushland in the coming months.
“We had staff from head office to talk to us about the fire conditions that are forecast for this season,” Illawarra Sutherland Group Captain Craig Robertson said.
“As our commissioner has said previously in media releases… we have to remember, yes, we will have a fire season, but a lot of people think we're going to have a fire season like the 2019/2020 fire season.
“When that season happened, we were coming out of at least three years of drought, where this season we're coming out of, you could say, two to three years of rain. But the conditions are there as you can see now [by] the hot days that we're getting and the elevated fire dangers that we've been getting over the last couple of months, and we're not even into summer yet.”
While little can be done to predict if or when fires may occur, the meeting was a rare opportunity for all brigade leaders to meet in person to evaluate their plans.
From here, Craig says pre-season preparations will continue for all local brigades. For Helensburgh Volunteer Rural Fire Brigade, that includes the completion of a 23-hectare hazard reduction burn at Baines Place that started on October 14.
“Our captains and senior deputies of the brigades are going back with their training officers and making sure that all their members are trained up as best as they can be for this season,” Craig said.
“They will continue that through the season and into next year, just constantly training and preparing for whatever they have to face in the next 12 months.
“At this stage we're still able to do our hazard reductions, but it may come to the stage where we have to stop because it's just too dry or the conditions aren't favourable for us.”
As for home preparations, Craig implores the community to establish a Bush Fire Survival Plan for their family as soon as possible and download the Hazards Near Me (formerly Fires Near Me) app to stay up to date with bushfire alerts.
“As we speak now, Sydney is going into a total fire ban,” Craig said.
“One thing we really need to do now for our community is to actually start to have them sit down and discuss their Bush Fire Survival Plans, sit down with their family and work out what they're going to do.”
For more information about planning for fire season, visit the NSW RFS website
