Blue Mountains District RFS headquarters in Katoomba has added a high tech bow to its arsenal of tools to fight major bushfires - and it's ready for action just in time for the start of this bushfire danger season.
RFS district manager David Jones gave the Gazette a tour of the building's new incident operations room during final testing earlier this month.
Upgraded to the tune of $250,000, the facility is fitted with 12 large LCD screens that can display many different types of maps and information simultaneously, two smart boards, a new computer system serviced by fibre optic cabling and enough desks fitted with telephone stations to comfortably accommodate up to 45 people.
Superintendent Jones said work began on the upgrade last June and half the cost was funded from donations to the RFS and the rest provided by the NSW government.
"We've used a big chunk of donations to build this room - the generosity of this community is so strong and I think that's further recognition of what's been going on here."
Supt Jones said they now had the capacity to handle two major incident management events in the same room.
"That provides us with a lot more flexibility.
"But the biggest thing is information can now be obtained, displayed and shared in real time.
"We now have the ability to communicate with personnel at the fire fronts through their devices like iPads and tablets.
"So if we have a group officer in the field we can directly send them the big picture information to support them and they can update us with any localised changes to fire activity or conditions.
"We have GPS mapping systems that can be beamed up on the smart boards and we can then draw markings on things like fire front maps to update them utilising the latest information, then save and share that straight away through email, our website and on social media.
"We aim to update that information as often as required during major bushfire incidents and I'll have a situation officer who will be just doing that task all the time in every shift.
"So what used to take two or three hours to do will be able to be done in a few minutes."
Supt Jones also said improvements have been made to the RFS' emergency warning messaging system.
"When we believe the community is at increased risk we can send an emergency advice message by mobile phone using our address-based system, which we can narrow down to a street or even an individual home basis.
"I think we put out 14 emergency warnings during last October's bushfires that we sent to people's mobile phones, in addition to providing regular fire updates.
"There are lots of useful apps out there now that people can use too, like FiresNearMe.
"It's really impressive when you consider where we were just three or four years ago."