On Sunday, volunteers from my own Rural Fire Service brigade faced off against 70 metre flames in the Blue Mountains. Properties were consumed by fire but thankfully no life was lost. This mega-blaze at Gospers Mountain, where I have spent several 16-hour shifts, has been raging for weeks and burned more than 380,000 hectares. There are 117 bushfires blazing in NSW alone and we face extreme heat by the end of the week.

The Prime Minister has urged everyone to calm down about bushfires raging through NSW, Queensland, and now WA. He has said that he can recall as a boy seeing Sydney surrounded by bushfire smoke haze, and that for children, or anyone who hadn’t experienced it before, it was “deeply troubling”.

But the experiences I describe here are nothing like the Prime Minister’s recollections of yesteryear. The fires we are battling today started earlier, burn more intensely, have destroyed more homes and covered more ground than anything we’ve seen before in NSW. Fact, not opinion. Seasoned firefighters have felt overwhelmed by what they’ve seen, and exhaustion has become a way of life. Fear and anxiety among the population grows daily as fires advance.

The Prime Minister has said he takes advice from fire chiefs and will provide any assistance that is requested. However, his government continues to sit on a business case, more than 12 months old, pleading for more money to lease large firefighting aircraft. Last week’s funding announcement has been confirmed as simply a one-off. On Sunday, just before fire escalated in the Blue Mountains, the large 737 air tanker headed over to Perth to assist. An example of something my retired fire chief colleagues and I warned about – not enough aircraft to cover simultaneous, longer fire seasons.