El Nino heightens fire season risk, Orana RFS says prepare now

The El Nino could be called by the Australia Bureau of Meteorology during spring, posing "significant potential" for a dangerous fire season, according to Dave Milsteed, NSW RFS Orana Team district manager.

"The reality is at this point we are still expecting an El Nino season to develop prior to spring - that for us will mean the weather will be drier than normal and warmer than normal, which will also give us a heightened [risk] of fires breaking out," Mr Milsteed told the Daily Liberal.

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"The community message we want to get out there is now is the time to start preparing. Don't leave it until summer, and don't leave it until a fire breaks out."

The Bureau maintained its El Nino Alert status on Tuesday, July 18, despite the UN's World Meteorological Organization declaring an El Nino earlier in July. The next update from the Bureau is due on August 1.

The local RFS is urging the community to prepare properties, ensure combustibles including natural timber are away from homes and assets, test and run firefighting equipment to make sure it's operable and obtain a hose that can reach all the way around your home.

Critically, develop a bushfire survival plan, and make sure the members of your household understand what is in that bushfire survival plan and what are the trigger points for those actions.

"Will we stay or go? If we go, where will we go? Who will we tell we've made these decisions and that we're leaving?" Mr Milsteed said.

Make allowances for animals - if necessary, open property gates so animals have a chance to escape a moving fire.

"Grass fires move incredibly fast. Quite often, unfortunately, my firefighters have had to cut fences to let stock get away from a fire. [This means] there has to be efforts by owners to round up stock again but that's better than having them killed in the corner of a paddock because they couldn't get away from a fire," Mr Milsteed said.

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This year's fire season in the Orana is expected to be "certainly worse than last year", due also to the high amount of grass growth during the wet season, Mr Milsteed said.

"I believe we certainly have a heightened risk in the western area due to the significant grass growth ... we have significant potential [for grass fires]. If we get a run of warm dry days with a bit of wind it is not going to take very much for a fire of significance to get going."

He appealed to the community to be careful when using fire.

"In a rural landscape, fire is used as a land management tool. Be careful, make sure you know what the weather will be the day you light the fire and what it will be like the preceding days. Unfortunately, it only takes one piece of dung to start a fire up again and we need to be vigilant on that sort of thing."

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He reminded property owners to check their land after lightning storms to check for potential lightning strikes and to contact authorities if a grass fire has started.

"The critical thing to remind everyone is that if we start getting a lot of incidents, there's only a finite amount of fire appliances. We will do everything we can to support the community, we just need the community to be fire smart," Mr Milsteed said.

Find out more at www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/resources/bush-fire-survival-plan

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