THE New England North West region is on the hunt for on-call firefighters, with a state wide recruitment drive launched last week.
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Senior firefighters have urged locals, who believe they can offer the time to serve their community, to apply for a retained firefighter position with Fire NSW.
Zone commander Superintendent Tom Cooper said people living in areas across the New England were encouraged to apply.
In particular, there were shortages in Walcha, Wee Waa and Boggabri.
"But generally, in the whole region, we are looking for staff," Superintendent Cooper said.
"We are looking for people who have good day time availability during the week.
"We tend to find that people who live in the smaller towns leave them to go to work, so it might be a little difficult to staff a station during the day.
"Stay at home mums would be ideal, once their kids have gone to school, or people who run there own businesses and can stop what they're doing when they get a fire call.
"Or people who run local businesses, who are prepared to let their employees be released when there is a fire call.”
Superintendent Cooper said prospective retained firefighters should be be over the age of 18, be fit and healthy, and dedicated to the job.
The local fire leader's calls for applicants follows a television campaign targeted to regional areas, to recruit more fire fighters into the brigade.