Rural Fire Service volunteers will benefit from 30 new air blowers that were purchased this week to help firefighters remove leaf litter and flammable debris from the path of a fire.
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The air blowers were purchased with donations from individuals as well as from $14,300 raised through an Orange Art Society charity auction that followed the summer bushfires.
Canobolas Rural Fire Zone operations coordinator Brett Bowden said there are 79 brigades within the zone and the 30 air blowers would be sent to those that face the most extreme fire risk.
He said about six brigades already had blowers.
"We are not able to [deliver them] to every brigade at the moment but that's something we are going to work on," Mr Bowden said.
"Traditionally we've used a rakehoe with a steel rake on one side and a hoe on the other side.
"These days we try to use more technology and work smarter not harder."
He said that during the bushfires, donations of food, water and hand sanitiser were packed into care packages and taken with firefighters when they went to the fire zones but funds were saved for the equipment purchase.
"We were very fortunate to receive really great support from the people of NSW, we were really fortunate locally as well with the support from our community," Mr Bowden said.
Mr Bowden said about 750 firefighters from the zone were sent to other parts of the state to help with firefighting efforts during the bushfires.
"A lot of those people went more than one time, [crews] were going every four days," he said.
He said the blowers were purchased this week for close to $24,000 and they cost about $750 each with 10 being purchased from Orange, 10 from Blayney and 10 from Cowra.
The blowers from Orange were bought from Hutcheon & Pearce farm and agricultural machinery suppliers on Thursday.
"We thought we should provide as much business to our local suppliers as we can," Mr Bowden said.
"These businesses have also been struggling through the drought in the last four years."
Orange Art Society president David Mason said the charity art auction for the RFS went better than expected.
"In the end we thought if we got $10,000 we would have done really well," Mr Mason said.
Mr Mason said there were 120 items in the auction including 11 that were not paintings and everything except two paintings met the reserve price.
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Tanya Marschke
I am based at Orange and cover a wide range of subjects as well as the weekly business column. I've worked consistently in the the media industry since 2006 including the past seven years at the Central Western Daily. Before moving to Orange, I worked as a journalist at weekly newspapers the Beaudesert Times and the Gold Coast Sun in Queensland, as well as the Scone Advocate in the Hunter Valley. I started my career at the Ridge News in Lightning Ridge while I completed my journalism studies remotely at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst.
I am based at Orange and cover a wide range of subjects as well as the weekly business column. I've worked consistently in the the media industry since 2006 including the past seven years at the Central Western Daily. Before moving to Orange, I worked as a journalist at weekly newspapers the Beaudesert Times and the Gold Coast Sun in Queensland, as well as the Scone Advocate in the Hunter Valley. I started my career at the Ridge News in Lightning Ridge while I completed my journalism studies remotely at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst.
