The Riverina and wider state has emerged out the other side of a mammoth fire season.
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For the Riverina region alone, across four local government areas, NSW Rural Fire Service teams attended 283 incidents from bushfires to vehicle fires, as well as an additional nine structural fires.
Crews were called to 28 motorvehicle accidents, completed more than 10,000 hours of service statewide and saw 177 members deployed across NSW.
Yet, this was all outside of the efforts required to tackle the Dunns Road Bushfire which devastated more than 330,000 hectares of land over 50 days.
Riverina Zone operational officer Brad Stewart reported a total of 1704 volunteers stepping up to fight the Dunns Road Bushfire.
"We saw volunteers work in excess of 25,000 hours, the aviation brigade stood up and manned the Wagga airbase with 16 people giving in excess of 1300 hours to provide technical support to 12 plus aircraft," he said.
"At the peak of it all on one day alone, volunteers reloaded these aircraft 98 times with well over 300,000 litres of fire retardant."
193 homes were completely destroyed in the Dunns Road fire, with a further 49 damaged, yet crews were able to save 766.
Facilities such as service stations and phone exchange towers took a loss of 35 structures, with 15 damaged, and 247 actively defended with no impact from the fire.
The NSW RFS were able to save 1658 out buildings like hay sheds, with 611 destroyed and 187 damaged.
Bruce Angel was one of the thousands of NSW RFS volunteers who helped deal with the Dunns Road fire.
"The Dunns Road fire eclipsed anything I've seen before both in size and the need for ongoing attention," he said.
"It put a great deal of pressure on resources, but in saying that, everyone stood up and the capacity of our volunteers was unwavering, they just kept putting their hand up shift after shift without hesitation."
The captain of the Tarcutta Brigade has been a volunteer fire fighter for close to 50 years now, and said he'd hope the fire season gone was the first and last he'd see of its magnitude.
"We don't want to see anything like that ever again," Mr Angel said.
"There has been a lot of lessons learnt coming out of the fire though, but I honestly believe we did a fantastic job as an organisation in keeping the fire to what we did, but as always, you have to look back and see what we could do better."
The next official bushfire danger period for NSW is set to begin October 1, 2020, however Mr Stewart said it can vary across the state.
"Northern NSW starts a month earlier in September, however last year, some districts started their official season in August because of the drought," he said.
"In the southern region here, we always start November 1, but should the drought continue and we don't see sufficient rain, we may be at risk and so bring that period forward to October 1."
In other news:
While the official bushfire danger period has ended for now, Mr Stewart urged people to remain vigilant.
"The message always has been and always will be that people need to prepare well before fire comes at them," he said.
"I can't encourage enough that those who live close to bushfire prone lands have a well prepared home well in advance of the fire season, so if they are threatened by fire, it gives them the best possible chance of saving their property."
Mr Stewart said all involved in fighting fires and assisting rescues across this season were to be commended.
From the total 283 fires outside of the Dunns Road Bushfire, 202 occurred in Wagga, 23 in Lockhart, 43 in Junee, and 15 in Coolamon.
Volunteer duties included communications officers, radio operators, community field liaisons, fire fighters, strike team leaders, field mechanics, heavy plant supervisors, fire ground reconnaissance and more.
"We are now already looking at hazard reduction burns, despite the impediment from COVID-19. We are always looking ahead to see how to protect the community," Mr Stewart said.