Susan Coleman

“In the last six weeks or so, we've had something like 600 incidents altogether, of which about 130 are to do with wildfires," she added.”

“Normally we'd go to something like 4,000 incidents a year. If it kept on at this rate it would be over 5,000, so it's really quite significant.”

“Over the weekend alone, the fire service incident log showed crews were sent to 20 calls for what they called 'fires in the open', and several more to reports of smoke.”