The Rural Fire Service will be better prepared for bush fires with a major budget spending on hazard reduction, maintaining strategic fire trails, and a new fleet of firetrucks.
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The NSW government is investing $315.2 million for RFS to be able to effectively do its job as recommended in the bush fire final inquiry report which heard 1,967 submissions and was released in July 2020.
It will be spent on buying new trucks and retrofitting old trucks ($105.6 million), boosting the number of fire mitigating crews ($75.4 million), and maintenance of vital fire trails ($10 million).
The Black Summer fire burned more than 5.5 million hectares, gutted 2,448 homes in the western, south and northern parts of the state, 33 lives were lost, and 450 others nearly died of smoke inhalation that CSIRO medical experts described as worse than the 1939 Black Friday fires in Victoria.
The catastrophic fire cost the agriculture and food sector losses up to $6 billion in livestock, crops and buildings.
The fire started in October 2019 in the Gosper's Mountain side of the Wollemi National Park near Glen Davis that spread to towns in Lithgow, the Blue Mountains, the upper Hawkesbury, and Bilpin destroying 22 homes and outbuildings. About 512,626 hectares of Gosper's Mountains' forested areas burnt for weeks.
Dubbo MP Dugald Saunders said the devastating bush fire had a lasting impact on communities right across the state, including the Dubbo region.
"We never want to experience another Black Summer fire season, but it's important that our emergency services are as well-resourced and ready as possible," Mr Saunders said.
"We are acting on all 76 recommendations of the NSW Bushfire Inquiry, and by beefing up our emergency services like the RFS, we are ensuring our region is better prepared for the future challenges we will inevitably face."
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The previous budget committed $516.4 million to address the inquiry's recommendations, and the fresh funding takes the spending to over $830 million in bush fire-proofing the state, Mr Saunders said.
Emergency services and resilience minister Steph Cooke said the fresh funding will also help protect firefighters when they respond to future emergency events.
"We will continue to act on the learning of the 2019-20 Black Summer fire season. The safety of our firefighters who put themselves on the line to protect families, homes, businesses and the environment, is paramount," Ms Cooke said.