NSW firefighters are taking advantage of easing conditions to try to get bushfires ravaging the state under control before temperatures soar later this week.
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Firefighters had another tough day on Saturday as dozens of fires burned across the state, including the massive Gospers Mountain blaze near Sydney's northwestern outskirts.
Conditions have eased on Sunday, allowing firefighters a chance to do critical back-burning and containment work ahead of Tuesday, when the mercury is tipped to soar into the 40s in parts of the state.
NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said overnight conditions had improved, with the Currowan fire on the South Coast and Green Wattle Creek fire near Camden both downgraded to advice.
"We've got much more benign conditions, particularly a dominant easterly influence which will stretch pretty much right across most of our fire grounds," he told Seven News on Sunday.
"Which means hundreds - as a matter of fact more than 1600 - firefighters are around again today doing really important and critical back burning and containment-line consolidation to try and gain the upper hand before we ee those conditions deteriorate into Tuesday."
Firefighters in the Newcastle area faced delays in their attempts to get bushfires under control after aircraft were grounded on Saturday when an RFS helicopter crashed while helping to battle a fire at Jarrah Road in Girvan.
"They were grounded as a precaution, just to make sure there were no systemic issues like a bad fuel supply or something like that which might have attributed to the accident yesterday," Mr Fitzsimmons said.
"They're all back in the field today but unfortunately that other machine that's suffered some pretty significant damage is now out of commission but fortunately the pilot got away from that trouble-free."
At 6am on Sunday there were 96 bush and grass fires in NSW - 47 of which were not contained. Four fires are at a watch and act level.
The danger is high in the Illawarra/Shoalhaven areas, Greater Sydney, Monaro alpine, far north coast, southern slopes, north coast, ACT and southern ranges, and low to moderate in the rest of NSW.
The central ranges, northwestern, New England, Greater Hunter and northern slopes regions are all facing a day of very high fire danger.
Australian Associated Press
