NSW Fire and Rescue Orange and Rural Fire Service respond to weekend fires

Fire and Rescue NSW Orange responded to the fire at Matthews Avenue just before 2pm on Sunday.

A kayak had completely burnt when firefighters arrived. There was no one home at the time so passers-by had mostly extinguished by the time firefighters arrived.

The firefighters then checked on the welfare of a couple of dogs that were in a separate part of the garage. The dogs were ok.

Firefighters waited for the owners to come home and the cause of the fire could not be established.

On Saturday night NSW Fire and Rescue also extinguished a grass fire at Discovery Drive.

The firefighters received the call at 5.32pm and were at the scene for about half an hour.

While to town brigade was at Discovery Drive the Rural Fire Service responded to another fire near the Northern Distributor Road and Astill Drive.

Canobolas Rural Fire Service district manager Brett Bowden said the fire took place near the border of the town and country brigades so they both attended.

"There's been an abandoned car parked there for about a week and there's been a grass fire near that vehicle," Mr Bowden said.

"We don't know what it was caused by and it didn't take too long to wrap that up."

He said in terms of fires it has been quiet for the RFS since rain on Wednesday last week.

"Pretty much around Orange we had 40 millimetres of rain and since then we've been pretty quiet," Mr Bowden said.

"We had a couple of jobs further out west, down around Eugowra [on Saturday]."

He said it was a small grassfire but most call outs recently have been for automatic fire alarms.

"Since that rain it's been relatively quiet, you know lower temperatures and damper fuels, higher humidity levels, that's made things a bit more restful for our brigade but it is supposed to warm up again next week," Mr Bowden said.

"We expect the back-end of October and certainly through November and December might be a challenging time for us.

However, before that wet weather, particularly in the last few weeks of September the RFS Canobolas zone had been averaging 30 incidents a week.

"Particularly before the start of the month, so in the lead up to the end of September because [October 1] is the start of the bushfire danger period," he said.

"If people want to burn off past [October 1] then they need to have a permit to do so.

"Permits are free but you need to get a fire permit and that way local RFS brigades can control the time of ignition and what people burn so we have a little bit more control of things.

"But in those last couple of weeks in September we were sort of having 25 to 30 incidents a week, that's across our four local government areas of Orange, Blayney, Cabonne and Cowra.

"Some of those calls are motor vehicle accidents and things like that but the great majority are fires where people have lit something and it's got away on them.

"Now permits are in we expect less of those nuisance type fires because we've got a little more control about how people burn."

Heavy winds on the October long weekend also kept firefighters on their toes. Saturday, September 30 and Monday, October 2 were both total fire ban days and there were seven different call outs on the Monday.

"Fortunately we were able to get on top of them all pretty quickly and they didn't become large fire events in anyway, shape or form," Mr Bowden said.

"It's days like those days where you're basically just holding your breath, particularly through the afternoon period, you're hoping that nothing goes awry.

He said fires on those sorts of days and particularly through December, January and February when the fuel's much dryer than it is now.

"It's still relatively green," Mr Bowden said, "but it will be days like that when you've got hot, dry, windy conditions and hot dry fuels you just don't want fires on those sort of days because that's when things can go pear shaped really quickly."

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