FOR years the NSW Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescue NSW have been the chalk and cheese of two of the largest emergency services operations in the world.
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One is a 72,000-strong band of country volunteers and the other a 6858-strong team of highly paid urban professionals and 5890 community fire unit members.
The turf war has raged up and down the state for the best part of a century.
Such was the animosity between the two services that a coronial inquiry after the 1994 bushfires, headed by the deputy coroner John Hiatt, recommended their amalgamation.
But the then premier Bob Carr knocked the idea on its head saying it would be to the detriment of volunteerism. Instead, the two services would have to learn how to fight side by side.
It was advice both organisations should now heed.
