Emergency services are urging Canberrans to prepare for the fire and storm season, which runs from October 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025.
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NewsTranscript
00:00The seasonal outlook for spring is for an average fire season. We have had a dry
00:04winter but we've still got good fuel moisture content up in the higher
00:08country. Our biggest concern this year is going to be from grass fires. We'll get
00:12spring growth, those grasses will start to cure. Grass fires can develop and move
00:18very quickly, particularly under a wind-driven environment. So now we're
00:22asking the community, now is the time to start to prepare yourself and your
00:25property. We look at every season as a worst-case scenario and we are declaring
00:31it average but the volunteers are prepared, they've been prepared all year
00:34round and they will come and help the community if an incident does start and
00:38they've also been doing some mitigation activities recently to try and reduce
00:42that risk in that urban environment for the community. Canberra, now's the time to
00:47prepare for storms. Secure loose items around the yard, trim your branches that
00:53may be loose hanging and get any repairs that you might not have finished off
00:56from the last rainy periods. The SES is there to help you out in your time of
01:02need, call us on 132 500 but please also remember that these guys are volunteers
01:08so if you do need major repairs to your property please organise that through
01:13your insurer or through the property owner. The volunteers are there to make
01:17temporary repairs to keep your place safe until such time that you can do
01:21those. We'll be able to alert different parts of Canberra with different
01:24advice so people in one suburb may require or may get different advice from
01:30people in other suburbs. We'll be able to really target that down our individual
01:33suburbs to nuance and get the best information to our people and to
01:37Canberrans this year. They'll come through on text messages on their phone and
01:41it'll target the phones that are in that area so we've got the technology to
01:45target areas within a particular area and if you're in that area even visiting
01:50you'll get that message as well and that'll be the same if you're down the
01:53south coast of New South Wales you'll get a message from the New South Wales
01:56RFS about what advice you need to see down there.