Dictionary of Sydney

The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.

New South Wales Rural Fire Service

The world's largest volunteer firefighting organisation with jurisdiction over 99 percent of the land area of New South Wales. Formed in 1997 when legislation was introduced after the Coronial inquiry into 1994 Eastern seaboard fires recommended that the many local volunteer fire services be consolidated into a single Rural Fire Service with a single chain of command.

Milestone
Formed
Sep 1997
Replaced
01 Sep 1997
Type

Eastern seaboard bushfires 1994

,
2021

The bushfire season of 1994 was one of the worst in the history of New South Wales. Eight hundred blazes torched over 800,000 hectares of bushland from Batemans Bay to the Queensland border, with mass evacuations occurring in populated areas up and down the state. Three volunteer firefighters and one civilian lost their lives during the fires.