Our fireys lending a hand to their mates – The Sunday Telegraph

AMY HARRIS
MATT BAMFORD

Hundreds of NSW firefighters will travel to South Australia and Victoria to help battle major blazes rampaging across the southern states.

About 170 volunteers, along with 25 fire trucks, an air crane and six surveillance aircraft arrived in Victoria early yesterday. Meanwhile, about 140 volunteers are expected to arrive to reinforce crews in the worst-hit areas of South Australia this morning.

A spokeswoman for the NSW Rural Fire Service said there were a number of other volunteers “on standby” to be deployed as required over the coming days.

Acting Premier Troy Grant said the RFS teams would “do all they could to provide resources and support”. “Our NSW emergency service personnel have a hard task ahead of them and I urge all specialist officers and frontline firefighters to take care in the extreme conditions,” Mr Grant said.

Forecasts of hotter weather in NSW, meanwhile, have prompted local firefighters to warn that the threat of bushfires is set to rise in coming weeks. Rural Fire Service spokeswoman Natalie Sanders said the current conditions had led to a low to moderate fire danger but there was no time to be complacent.

“Conditions change and we are expecting higher fire dangers over the coming weeks, so we are advising people to be safety conscious,” she said.