The control room at Rural Fire Service Headquarters at Homebush in Sydney

(Updated December 2025: this post was originally published in December 2019, during the Black Summer fires. With temperatures peaking over 40 degrees (C), we’re pinning this post for easy access. It’s always being updated: your suggestions are welcome!)

Five years Ago…

The NSW Rural Fire Service has released this video to mark the fifth anniversary of the start of the Black Summer fires.

Are you Ready?

Check out the NSW Government’s Get Ready for Summer web site.

Northern Beaches Council’s Disaster Dashboard keeps you up to date with any current issues, including fire danger, weather, lagoon water levels, utility outages and more.

April 2025: NSW State Emergency Services have publish a household Emergency Planning Tool.

Travelling in Bush Fire Prone Areas

The NSW Rural Fire Service also released this useful short video of tips for travelling in bush fire prone areas.

Service NSW

Service New South Wales has a web site devoted to resources for dealing with emergencies and natural disasters.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

“When All Else Fails…”

As Radio Amateurs, we like to think that “When All Else Fails, Amateur Radio Will Get Through”™, but not many of us have real life experience of using Amateur Radio in an emergency. Training with WICEN NSW Inc. or similar organisation is recommended, because “EmComm” nets operate in a way that is very different from the social radio communication we are more familiar with.

Wavetalkers

The Wavetalkers are a group of American Amateurs with extensive experience in the emergency services. Their YouTube channel has a number of videos that are well worth watching too, including:

They also have a regular live net on YouTube, at 1pm Pacific Time in the USA (Monday mornings AEST). Viewers are encouraged to check into the net via Winlink – instructions are usually given at the start of the net.

Grid Down Communications

While modern telecommunications infrastructure is close to miraculous by the standards of decades past, it is not 100% immune to disruption, even in large urban areas. So it can be useful to build your “grid down” communication skills (also useful for POTA and SOTA activations HI!)
Julian OH8STN has a great (work in progress) book on this topic: Grid Down Emergency Communications: How to Stay Connected When the Grid Goes Down, and a new (March 2025) book, Off-Grid Power for Emergency Communications.

Staying in the Loop

With the bushfire season fast approaching again, it’s a good idea to have the latest fire information at your fingertips. There is also plenty to be heard on the radio!

Here are a few free apps and web links to get you started:

Hazards Near Me

Published by the NSW Rural Fire Service, Hazards Near Me is essential to keep up to date when things get hot in New South Wales. See all the active fires and hazard reduction activity, get status updates, set watch zones, get alerts. Visit the Fires Near Me web site, or install the Hazards Near Me app for your iPhone or Android device.

Get Ready NSW is the NSW government’s web site for disaster preparedness.

If you’re travelling interstate, try the Fires Near Me Australia app for iPhone or Android, or check these incident maps:

Live Traffic NSW

If you’re travelling (fire season or not), it’s handy to be aware of road closures and other traffic conditions. Transport NSW has you covered.

Visit the web site before you set out, or for updates as you travel get the app for your iPhone or Android device.

Emergency+

From the National Triple Zero Awareness Work Group, this app shows you numbers for Emergency services, SES, and non-urgent police reports. It also shows your GPS coordinates, and your location on a map, geocoded to a street address where possible.

Some services use What3Words as a shorthand location, and there’s a guide to which number is best to call depending on your situation.

Get it for your iPhone or Android device.

RFS Buddy

From Volunteer Technology Services Australia, this one is generally aimed more at firefighting crews, but has plenty of useful information. First off, if you’re out in the bush, and you need to tell the emergency services where you are, the app will show display your location in multiple formats:

  • Standard GPS (e.g. -33.12345 151.12345)
  • Aviation (e.g. -33° 41.1234′, 151° 6.1234′)
  • RFS Mapping (e.g. 56H LH 123 456)
  • Easting / Northing (e.g. Easting 123456 Northing 654321)
  • Degrees/Minutes/Seconds (e.g. 33° 12′ 3” S, 151° 1′ 2″ E)

The app also includes a copy of the NSW Rural Fire Service Firefighters’ Pocketbook (available separately for iPhone and Android), a handy reference to RFS procedures, equipment, radio operations, etc. If you’re an active RFS brigade member, the app also supports messaging. You can also add the locations of assets, hazards, resources, and water sources.

The RFSBuddy app is available for iPhone and Android.

Marine Rescue NSW

If you’re heading out on the water, the Marine Rescue NSW app is a must. It provides local tide, weather, and sea conditions, your boat coordinates, fishing and ramp info, safety checklists, emergency call procedures, and more. Bring along an EPIRB and your marine radio too, just in case!

BOM Weather

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is the go-to site for all things weather in Australia. BOM Weather is also available for your iPhone and Android.

Windy & MetEye

The Windy web site is beautiful to look at, and holds a wealth of information about weather conditions. Select a location and get detailed forecasts for wind, temperature, and much much more. Also available as an app for iPhone and Android. Note: as I was reminded during my volunteer time at RFS HQ in Homebush, this application is not sanctioned by RFS or the NSW government, so keep that in mind.

Not quite as pretty, but probably more reliable for realtime wind information as it’s from our Bureau of Meteorology, is MetEye.

Beachsafe

When you’re down by the sea, Surf Life Saving Australia’s Beachsafe app provides beach information such as patrol status, weather, hazards, swell and tides. Available for iPhone and Android.

Something in the Air…

Asthma Australia’s AirSmart app, for iPhone and Android, provides air quality ratings for you area, along with weather and pollen count.

When the fires are burning, the resulting smoke can become dangerously unhealthy. AirVisual is another visually impressive web site that shows real time air quality levels. You can get it as an iPhone or Android app.

I’m not entirely sure of the accuracy though. For example when I woke up in Hornsby this morning, the app described the air as “Good”, with a Air Quality Index of 46 (several hours later, it’s 53 – “Moderate”). For comparison, https://aqicn.org/map/sydney/ shows Macquarie Park as “Unhealthy” with an AQI of 251, which AirVisual shows as “Good” with an AQI of 33. Interestingly, both cite the NSW Government Office of Environment and Heritage as their data source.

For other locations, AQI readings are presumably interpolated from data supplied by monitoring stations, so take with a pinch of salt.

If you’re really keen, you can purchase a linked air quality monitor to contribute your own data. (It’s not cheap though at USD 295).

Alternatively, IKEA now sells two models of air quality monitor, VINDRIKTNING ($19) and the fancier VINDSTRYKA ($59). There are also projects online for those who like tinkering with these devices or prefer to build their own.

Tracking firefighters in the Air

Most aviation enthusiasts know about the FlightRadar24 web site, and the corresponding iPhone and Android apps.

One tip I thought I’d mention is that you can set filters, for example to show only aircraft with altitudes between, say, 500 and 3500 feet. This removes most of the commercial aviation from the map, making it easier to see aircraft that might be actively involved in fire operations. This might now be available only to paid subscribers, but ADS-B Exchange below still allows this.

Click on an individual aircraft to see the path it’s been flying: if it’s circling areas where there are bushfires, you probably have a live one!

Note that some of the aircraft images are incorrect, or more likely out of date. Presumably this indicates that the old aircraft has been decommissioned or sold overseas, and the callsign re-issued. As an example, an aircraft active near Bilpin as I type, signing as DVM (its registration is VH-DVM) is listed as a fixed wing Cessna 172 Skyhawk, but the associated photo from jetphotos.com, shows that photo as a Eurocopter AS350 B3 Ecureuil, sporting that callsign. Jetphotos also shows a Cessna 182 Skylane with that callsign.

Update: ADS-B Exchange and FlightAware are good alternative sites, which often include aircraft that have been filtered out of FlightRadar’s coverage. You can also contribute your own ADS-B data into these systems to improve their coverage, using something as simple as a Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR dongle!

Digital Earth Australia Hotspots

This web site will give you the big picture of where the fires are burning across Australia. (Note: check out the Legend control at the top left of the page: colours indicate the age of fire data, not the intensity of the fire. Dark red is 0-2 hours old, yellow is 48-72 hours old.) Thanks to Simon VK2YU for this one.

Bonus: know your fire-fighting aircraft

While you’re identifying aircraft flying overhead, you might enjoy these liftouts from the Rural Fire Service’s Bush Fire Bulletin:

Realtime Lightning Maps

Another interesting site is LightningMaps, which gathers lightning strike signatures from network-connected radio receivers to identify where the strikes are occurring in real time. Lightning can of course start fires in vulnerable areas, and can indicate the presence of rain storms that might also put them out.

The corresponding Blitzortung Lightning Monitor app is available for iPhone and Android. It’s also open source, so you can download the Android version of the source code from GitHub.

Weather Hazards in Australia

Google has retired its Crisis Map app, but many of its features have been incorporated into Google Maps and other services.

Do you know First Aid?

If you have had First Responder training, then check out the NSW Ambulance GoodSAM app; it will notify you if someone nearby needs “hands-only” CPR.

Radio Resources

To keep up to date with the latest news on the bush fires, tune into your local ABC radio station. Frequencies here.

Broadcastify streams the audio from many radio receivers around the world, including the club’s VK2RMB 2m FM repeater.

All Broadcastify feeds for New South Wales.

Selected Broadcastify feeds:

For general Aviation listening, try the club’s Bankstown Airport audio feed, or Live ATC on your iPhone or Android. Note: free to listen in the browser, but paid app. Thanks to Yves VK2AUJ for that suggestion.