IN THE halls of the Tamworth Rural Fire Service (RFS) headquarters, you might hear some knocking on wood and see some fingers firmly crossed.
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For all of the dread you might be sensing and hearing as the fire season approaches, conditions in the Tamworth region aren’t looking too bad at all.
Knock on wood.
It might look dry from above, but Tamworth RFS Superintendent Allyn Purkiss has been keeping a keen eye on what’s happening below the surface.
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“We got all of that rain at the start of winter, so we got a big heap of fuel flushed in,” Superintendent Purkiss said.
“The frosts have burnt all of that, it looks very dry through the country here, but there’s still a lot of ground moisture, for us especially.”
This week the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) released its outlook for the upcoming months, predicting an “above normal” fire season for this region.
While there’s good soil moisture in the south of the Tamworth area, country around Barraba and towards Bingara has dried-up a lot more.
The more-favourable conditions has allowed the Tamworth RFS to set-up some hazard reduction burns.
“We’ve still got a pretty good window,” he said.
“There’s some up near the back of Hanging Rock and just some smaller ones around town, some along the rail lines along Wallamore Rd.”
While the hazard reduction burns are one of the things the firies can control, the region is also moving into the more unpredictable storm season.
The local RFS volunteers were on their toes last weekend when a storm swept through the region.
“We got four or five lightning strikes out of the storm on Sunday, we had to go and deal with,” Superintendent Purkiss said.
“Most of them were pretty small, because conditions weren’t too bad so they were able to round them up, but I hope that’s not a good indication of how the season is going to go.”
The storms wreaked havoc further north on the Tablelands with out-of-control fires near Guyra.
The superintendent said there were more than 1200 volunteers on the books in Tamworth, but there’s always room for more.
“We’ve got around 1200-odd volunteers on the books, but around 20 per cent of those are the really active ones,” he said.
Parks and Wildlife prepared for season
The National Parks and Wildlife Service Northern Inland Branch has wrapped up its winter hazard reduction burning program for this year.
NPWS Northern Inland Branch Director, Rob Smith, said the colder months have been spent preparing for an expected busy summer.
“During July and August NPWS crews have completed 18,000 hectares of hazard reduction burning across the New England and North West,” Mr Smith said.
“Some of the key parks where strategic programs have been undertaken to protect property and wildlife include the Pilliga West and Torrington State Conservation Areas, and Oxley Wild Rivers, Washpool and Mount Kaputar National Parks.
Mr Smith said crews have responded to several wildfires in recent weeks.
“Unfortunately, we have already switched to wildfire suppression in the Northern Tablelands where NPWS crews have been engaged for several weeks responding to wildfires,” he said.
“In these conditions, and if weather forecasts don’t improve, it is likely we will have park fire bans in place across all parks in the North West and Central West Slopes and Plains fire districts.
The Parks and Wildlife director said local staff had their expertise shipped to Canada recently to help with wildfires.
“Our expertise has also been called on by our counterparts in Canada with four staff from our branch currently helping to suppress wildfires in British Columbia,” he said.
“Neil Reckord (Armidale), Nathan Clarke (Forbes), Joel Hatch (Narrabri) and Mark Crisp (Glen Innes) will soon end a 40-day stint, returning ready for the peak fire danger period in the north west and northern tablelands