WHILE large sections of the rest of the state burned, the Hunter came through Saturday's catastrophic fire conditions relatively unscathed as firefighting "strike teams" stamped out new fires and quickly worked to contain pre-existing blazes.
The strike teams from the NSW RFS and other agencies were pre-positioned in areas either historically known to be trouble spots or around already active blazes and were called on a number of times as the temperatures soared into the mid-40s in the Upper Hunter.
But despite the horrific fire conditions, there were no fires in the Hunter that reached the emergency level on Saturday and only one, the western side of the Kerry Ridge fire, a 145,000 hectare blaze that extends into the Central Tablelands, was labelled "watch and act".
Lower Hunter fire control centre Deputy Incident Controller Greg Symonds said the Kerry Ridge fire had returned to the lowest alert level and strike teams were on Sunday working to back burn and mop up after Saturday's outbreak. Meanwhile, the Owendale bushfire breached containment lines into the Bulga State Forest and towards the Singleton Military Area and was burning out of control on Sunday.
And the Mount Royal fire, burning in the Barrington Tops National Park, was uncontained on Sunday on a number of flanks in what is difficult and often inaccessible terrain.
As well as those already pre-existing fires, blazes sparked at Heatherbrae, Awaba, Pokolbin and North Rothbury on Saturday but were quickly controlled by strike teams in the area.
A firefighter, from Cessnock, was briefly hospitalised with heat stress, one of four firefighters injured across the state on Saturday.
As conditions improve the RFS are warning people not to become complacent.
