The NSW government will allocate significant funds in its upcoming budget to bushfire mitigation and management in hopes of avoiding a disaster on the scale of the Black Summer bushfires which ravaged regions like the Snowy Valleys.
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The 2022-23 budget will commit $315.2 million over the next four years to complete NSW Bushfire Inquiry recommendations, including $191 million towards the Rural Fire Service (RFS) and the rest for Forestry Corporation of NSW, Fire and Rescue, Crown Lands and NSW National Parks.
$105.6 million of that allocation will be used to deliver new RFS trucks and retrofit old ones, improvements to equipment Riverina Zone Group Captain Alan Brown said are absolutely crucial.
"The modern equipment is just so much better, it's going ahead by leaps and bounds," he said.
"Modern tankers are much better than even 10 year old ones.
"Particularly in a country where we're absolutely struggling for numbers, the only offset is to make the equipment as good as possible, so that one or two people can operate it really effectively."
Mr Brown, a recent National Emergency Medal recipient for his efforts in the 2019-20 bushfires and an RFS volunteer of more than 50 years, also said retrofitting old trucks with new equipment was a good idea.
"There's things you can fit such as monitors now onto old trucks that make them much more effective," he said.
$75.4 million will boost the number of mitigation crews and $10 million to enhance strategic fire trails.
"Those trails need continuous work because they're often in bushland areas, trees fall over them, and they get washed away - especially these last 12 months with such high rainfall," Mr Brown said.
"$10 million doesn't sound like a lot to me."
Mr Brown said the biggest thing holding back the RFS and its volunteer numbers is bureaucratic red tape.
"The obstacles to people getting into the service now are quite considerable and that needs to be fixed," he said.
Steve Bellchambers, whose farm and business were destroyed in the Snowy Valleys Dunns Road bushfire in January 2020 and is yet to rebuild his home, said he welcomed any help from the government.
"But my concern is that it won't be spent the way it should be spent," he said.
"I guess one of the big things for me was that when the RFS were here in the 2020 fires, we had no support whatsoever from them.
"They were actually told not to come into our areas."
Mr Bellchambers said farmers, like the group of 30 he said worked together to defend local farms in 2020, should be given better resources to work alongside the RFS.
"Are they going to filter out their old equipment to farmers?" he said.
"Because at the end of the day, we're the front line and we've been defending with whatever we had available."
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Mr Bellchambers also said he'd like to see collaboration between the local shire council and Indigenous fire management workers for cool burning.
"That way, once again, we've got people on the ground that know what they're doing," he said.
"Unfortunately, I don't think the RFS as a standalone organisation are sufficient to do what we need."
The upcoming budget will also commit $598 million towards 250 permanent firefighter and conservation roles, upgrading the radio network and the National Parks fleet.
Mayor Ian Chaffey said spending money on fire prevention is most beneficial for an area like the Snowy Valleys.
"Rather than spend a fortune remediating the damage that has been caused by natural disasters, we might be better if we spent a lot more time and effort in endeavouring to prevent them," he said.
"Or certainly minimise them - I'm not sure that we can prevent it from ever happening."
An additional $93.7 million will be spent to deliver a Climate Change Adaptation Strategy.
"I think you would have to be naive in the extreme to feel that the climate is not changing," Cr Chaffey said.
"The money's got to be spent wisely, not just on machinery and equipment, it's got to be spent in mitigating these types of events.
"We don't seem to learn from the experiences we've had in the past and how to respond."
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