Fitzsimmons enjoys new field after guiding state through fires

Speaking at the NSW Farm Writers' christmas luncheon Mr Fitzsimmons said he was about to resign and had made up his mind to do so just before NSW was plunged into its worst bushfire crisis in living memory.

He'd just been in England in July and was returning to resign. But by early August already there were signs of a terrible fire season ahead, even in the last month of winter. There were nearly 1000 fires that month - unprecedented for that time.

He then had a change of heart and believed he owed to his colleagues and Rural Fire Service Brigades to help them through what was mounting as a very challenging time. No one knew then just how bad things would get, some of the biggest fires known in Australia, and even the world, were about to be unleashed.

He said it was amazing that just 26 people were killed and 2448 homes lost. "That could easily have been hundreds of people and thousands more properties," he said, given the severity of the fires. He dealt with the loss of fire brigade members at a personal level which was very difficult, one killed, Sam McPaul, at Holbrook in an inferno or fire tornado that no one had ever seen before and toppled the fire truck. It was a miracle his fellow brigade member, Rodney O'Keefe, escaped from the upturned truck. "Staying in there wasn't an option," Mr O'Keefe told Mr Fitzsimmons as he went to console Mr McPaul's family. Sam had been killed in the crash.

Times have now changed dramatically now with COVID and now rain repairing some of the landscape, but the scars of the fires still run deep, Mr Fitzsimmons said.

Mr Fitzsimmons is enjoying his busy new role as NSW Resilience Commissioner, a position tied to the NSW Premier's office, in which he is planning how the state can become more resilient, not to just natural disasters but also any other threat, preserving essential infrastructure.

There was also personal resilience. He said one of the biggest issues he took from the Black Summer fires was the state of mental health of many males who felt hopeless at the loss of property or their livelihoods from the fire.

"Helping these people, and helping them to seek help is a major thing I will be pursuing," he said. He had a personal experience of a friend who was in that position and he was astonished that he said he didn't want anyone to know he was seeking mental health help.

"That is something we have to break down, seeking help," he said.

Mr Fitzsimmons said the digital information used and put out by the Rural Fire Service was world leading technology. Satellite techonology would play a big role in fighting fires in the future, he said. The Fires Near Me app was a huge success with people needing information. It was recently named as the third most searched word or field on Google in Australia this year.