Dubbo firefighters presented with National Emergency Medal for work during Black Summer Bushfires

In a medal presentation held at the Dubbo Fire Station on Monday evening, 25 firefighters from Fire and Rescue NSW's Dubbo and Delroy stations were presented with the National Emergency Medal for their work during the 2019 to 2020 Bushfires.

"Most of them are pretty humble people and they didn't expect any medals for their work," Zone Commander Region West 1, Anthony Hojel, said.

"They were humbled to be able to be recognised for their contribution. They just wanted to get out there and help the communities that they served, whether it be our local community or the wider NSW community."

Mr Hojel said the 25 firefighters who received the medal - awarded to people who "rendered sustained or significant service" during nationally-significant emergencies - are just some of many in the region who stepped up to serve during the crisis.

"They're just part of the contingent that we sent away during the fires," he said.

"We had staff throughout the Region West 1 Zone which goes out as far as Lightning Ridge who were all involved with either protecting things here or heading out to all the different areas of the state."

"They were all part of the big effort that everyone throughout the state put in during that time - they saw a lot of action, whether it was protecting houses from the main fire fronts or assisting with controlled burns."

Firefighters from Dubbo started responding to Black Summer fires in September 2019 and their final call-out was in February of 2020, Mr Hojel said.

"They did a fantastic job in some pretty trying conditions over the period," he said.

"It was a long drawn-out process of people going away from their families for long stretches of time and protecting communities they didn't even know. It shows they have really good resilience to be able to do all that and still maintain coverage in their local areas."

"It really shows the strength of the people out there that wanted to get involved with the greater effort to support communities which were just overwrought."

More recently, local Fire and Rescue personnel have been swapping their fire-proof jackets for their flood pants to play a part in the mammoth response to widespread flooding across the central west.

Mr Hojel said this is just another example of local firefighters pitching in to help out communities across the state during a time of crisis.

"It's really good for all the services to be able to come together and unite as one big force against these different natural disasters - from floods to fires or even COVID - all the services have been coming together to assist," he said.

"It doesn't matter what service you're in everybody's been working together to deal with all these different emergencies and incidents that we seem to be coming up with over the past few years."

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