Editorial
As we bid farewell to winter, our minds cast forward to spring and summer.
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It is hard not to do that without memories of last summer.
Smoke haze and ash falling across from the skies as horrific bushfires raged all around the Illawarra.
Our neighbours in the Southern Highlands and the South Coast bore the brutal brunt of the fire's fury.
Last summer's fires resulted in the death of 26 people in NSW including six firefighters.
Over five million hectares were burned and almost 2500 homes were destroyed. Lives were changed forever.
We all hope and pray history does not repeat this summer.
The independent inquiry into last summer's bushfires has now handed down 76 recommendations to the NSW government and they have been accepted.
Read more: NSW bishfire inquiry key recommendations
The recommendations include enhanced powers for landowners in the fire-fighting process.
Measures such as increased and compulsory land clearing, further investigation of cultural burning and night-time fire bombing were just a few of the recommendations.
NSW Emergency Services Minister David Elliott got it exactly right when he said the recommendations in the report were not "a silver bullet".
True enough. But they are a step in the right direction and we best act now in case history does indeed repeat.
"The release of this report is timely - we know our job is not done in recovering and rebuilding in the aftermath of those horrific bushfires," NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters on Tuesday.
"We think of those who experienced the trauma and pain every day, and those who are still in recovery mode, recovering from that horrific bushfire season."
For many the scars left by last summer will never truly heal.
Yet here we have an opportunity to take some positive steps to ensuring we don't see what the Premier accurately described as ""the biggest challenge we have faced in more than a century" again.
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