With all forecasts pointing towards another problematic bushfire season for Blue Mountains residents, Rural Fire Service district manager David Jones is urging people to be vigilant and make sure their household has a bushfire survival plan.
"We have a similar risk profile to last year and so we brought forward the start of the official bushfire danger period by one month," Superintendent Jones said.
"The large amounts of rain we had in August and the rains we got during thunderstorms into early spring - which are normally the drier months of the year - were welcome, but because we have rapidly draining soils it only takes a few days of high temperatures after heavy downpours for all that moisture to be lost.
"For the rest of this fire season, we are still looking at about a 50 to 60 per cent chance of an El Nino weather pattern from November onwards, which will bring drier and hotter than average conditions and more lightning strikes.
"The El Nino system may or may not eventuate or may only end up being a mild one, but we [the RFS] always plan for the worst and we all need to be prepared for another long fire danger period."
RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons agreed that forecasts alone indicated the current bushfire season could be more problematic than the last.
"Without being alarmists in any way, we are being realistic based on the forecast and the underlying conditions, [that this] season is shaping up to be a difficult one," Commissioner Fitzsimmons said.
Superintendent Jones said the late winter and early spring rains disrupted or postponed many planned hazard reduction burns in the Blue Mountains, but confirmed many effective recent burns were completed in the last six to eight weeks and he was "satisfied with progress overall".
"Burns are very strategic, are done to prescription and can only be done in the right conditions - generally we've only got about 41 suitable days to do hazard reduction burns in the Blue Mountains per year," he said.
"I think we've done about 40 per cent of what we'd planned to by late September but there have been some very successful strategic burns done in Faulconbridge, Linden, Leura and more recently in Valley Heights and in the Mid-Mountains.
"But it's important to remember that strategic hazard reduction helps reduce the risk of an ignition turning into a major bushfire but it doesn't prevent a bushfire starting."
On a broader strategic level, Superintendent Jones said "we've had the revised Blue Mountains Bushfire Management Plan put out for public exhibition recently and we've seen some good replies and feedback".
"All that will go back to the Bushfire Management Committee, which has representatives from all the major land managers."