With Tuesday's record breaking spring temperatures and howling hot winds, memories of Black Summer were never far from the minds of residents on the NSW South Coast.
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On a day of catastrophic fire danger, with schools and communities on edge, the quick thinking of an eagle-eyed Eden resident helped avert a potential disaster.
When Jan Blaxter, 81, looked out her window to see flames filling the scrubland metres from her home, she locked her black toy poodle Sophie inside, called Triple zero, then grabbed her garden hose.
Black smoke and angry flames were igniting the sky at nearby Aslings Beach just across the road from Ms Blaxter's home.
"All of a sudden the trees started to flare up and it was a massive fire," Ms Blaxter said, who had prepared by spraying the roof and the upper balcony of her home with water to reduce the likelihood of ember attack.
"My husband's in the nursing home, I'm here by myself, so you've got to start to think of things, you know," she said, describing the event as nerve-wracking and quite worrying as she watched from her home of the past 50 years.
"There were three or four young blokes on the side of the road trying to put it out," she said, before describing how someone poured what looked to be an esky of ice on the fire.
"Then a fellow came in a ute and he happened to have a hose on the back with water, so he helped, then [the] fire brigade turned up."
The fire came just one hour after the Rural Fire Service upgraded the Far South Coast's fire danger rating from Extreme to Catastrophic.
At 1.30pm the fire was categorised at Watch and Act level with a "heightened level of threat," and by 2.10pm firefighters had gained the upper hand and it had de-escalated to Advice level with no immediate threat to homes or lives.
Due to the extreme fire danger rating, parents of students in the Bega Valley were notified around 6pm on Monday, September 18, of multiple school closures the following day, under instructions from the Department of Education.
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The acting district manager of Far South Coast Rural Fire Service, Chris Anderson, said people needed to be aware of the bushfire risk in the landscape.
"We're going to see more of these days over the summer period, and we're still highly encouraging everyone to start thinking about their bushfire preparations," Mr Anderson said.
"We encourage everyone to report all fires to Triple Zero immediately.
"We'd rather be turned around from going to a fire than not be made aware of it."
RFS Bushfire Information Line 1800 679 737
If you are in urgent need of help, call Triple Zero 000