Firefighters wary of the wind
Published Date: 14 Jan 2016
Summary
THE ORANA Team of the NSW Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS) was preparing for the worst while hoping for the best during Wednesday's total fire ban across nine local government areas including Dubbo, Narromine and Wellington.
By Kim Bartley
Team manager Superintendent Lyndon Wieland reported on Wednesday that the fire danger rating in the Orana NSW RFS region had moved from very high to severe.
"We've stepped our alert level up now to have six staff in the fire control centre, all day today, and we also have volunteers on standby for a quick response to any incident that may start today," he said.
"We've also checked out where all our heavy plant operators are and the location of aircraft.
"It's standing operating procedure for us to wind up for these sort of days so we can jump on anything fairly quickly if possible."
Superintendent Wieland confirmed the team had not been called out on Tuesday or Wednesday morning.
"Let's hope the rest of today is the same," he said.
As the temperature climbed towards a forecast 41 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, Superintendent Wieland was expecting the wind to pick up.
"I believe it's going to gust up to 30 or 40 km/h this afternoon," he said.
"A windy day, whether it's hot or not, can cause a lot of problems."
The team manager again appealed to the public to be "very careful".
"Otherwise we could quite easily end up in the situation that other states are in where property and lives have been lost," he said.
"It all comes back to either lightning or somebody doing something that they shouldn't have been doing at the time."
The Bureau of Meteorology's seven-day forecast for Dubbo as of Wednesday predicts a top temperature of 39 degrees on Thursday and an 80 per cent chance of between 3 and 10 millimetres of rain falling in the afternoon and evening.
Wind gusts are predicted to reach 20 to 30km/h.
The other local government areas subject to Wednesday's total fire ban were Bland, Forbes, Lachlan, Parkes, Temora and Weddin.
