New South Wales Consolidated Acts

RURAL FIRES ACT 1997 - SECT 44

44 Commissioner’s responsibility

(1) The Commissioner is to take charge of bush fire fighting operations and bush fire prevention measures and to take such measures as the Commissioner considers necessary to control or suppress any bush fire in any part of the State if, in the opinion of the Commissioner:

(a) a bush fire has assumed or is likely to assume such proportions as to be incapable of control or suppression by the fire fighting authority or authorities in whose area or locality it is burning, or

(b) the prevailing conditions are conducive to the outbreak of a bush fire likely to assume such proportions, or

(c) a bush fire is not being effectively controlled or suppressed by the fire fighting authority or authorities in whose area or locality it is burning, or

(d) a bush fire is burning in a place that is not the responsibility of any fire fighting authority.

(2) The Commissioner may delegate the Commissioner’s functions under this Division (other than this power of delegation) to an officer or member of a rural fire brigade, an officer or member of New South Wales Fire Brigades, a member of staff of the Department of Industry and Investment, a member of staff of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water or any other person.

(3) The Commissioner is not subject to the control and direction of the Bush Fire Co-ordinating Committee in exercising the Commissioner’s functions under this Division but must, in exercising those functions, take into consideration any relevant bush fire management plan and, in the case of managed land, any relevant plan of the authority responsible for the managed land of which the Commissioner is aware.