TWO Moama district firefighters are among the throng of emergency services personnel tasked with combating the ‘Catastrophic Tuesday’ fire conditions in parts of NSW.
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Already in the Grafton area are RFS firefighters Kevin Barnes (Caldwell brigade) and Fred Darazs (Moama) who have joined NSW Rural Fire Service Mid Murray Inspector Doug Adamson.
Mid Murray Commander, Superintendent Tony Whitehorne departed for Narrabri on Monday in a pre-emptive move to offer his support to the firefighting efforts.
The local firefighters will face what the NSW RFS yesterday described as ‘‘the highest level of bush fire danger’’.
Residents in the the Greater Sydney, Greater Hunter and the Illawarra Shoalhaven areas have been warned that ‘‘if you are in the path of a fire in these conditions, your life will be at risk’’.
Three lives have already been lost as a result of the fires in NSW, and more than 150 homes and other buildings destroyed.
Mid Murray RFS has been sending strike teams to assist in other parts of NSW on an ongoing basis for the past six weeks, with senior officers saying they have ‘‘lost count’’ of how many have been deployed to date.
Recently returning from a RFS strike team deployment was Mid Murray Support Captain Wayne Fitzpatrick, who said the severity of the series of blazes is most notable in the evenings.
‘‘I flew over the fires on the way there and it didn’t look good, especially over the New England, Grafton, and Glen Innes areas,’’ he said.
‘‘When we arrived, we were in the National Park at Mt Kaputar fire in Narrabri doing the swing shift which is 12 hours from midnight to midday. We worked with other RFS volunteers, National Parks and Forestry.
‘‘We were just trying to contain the fire in the National Park, so it didn’t get out and we didn’t want it to destroy too much.
‘‘While we were on the edge of this fire, you could understand and see how big this really is from where we were. It is already about a couple thousand hectares, which is quite a large fire.
‘‘Sometimes you couldn’t see the flames in the daylight but as soon as night fell, you could see these huge lines of fire and flames everywhere which really showed you the extent of it all.
‘‘The effort put in by the volunteers from the Rural Fire Service and everyone there has been incredible.
‘‘You think about how many firefighters are needed for the 70 odd fires burning in the area, and a lot of them are RFS.’’
Capt. Smith said despite a number of local firefighters being deployed to other parts of NSW, the community will be predicted if a fire ignites locally.
‘‘We still have a sizeable crew and our two main firefighting appliances which can respond to any emergency situation in the area,’’ he said.
‘‘The appliance we are sending is actually our spare at the training centre so this will have no impact on the community and our ability to respond to callouts.’’
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