Flood-ravaged northern NSW communities are at risk of more disaster pain, as the state braces for its worst bushfire season since the “Black Summer” in 2019-20.

After three years of heavy rainfall and rapid vegetation growth, a return to hot and dry El Nino conditions has placed the Northern Rivers town of Lismore – which suffered its worst flooding on record in 2022 – squarely in the crosshairs of potentially catastrophic fires.

The region has the highest fuel loads in the state and therefore the highest risk, Premier Chris Minns told reporters during an emergency training exercise on Tuesday.

He urged residents in fire-prone areas to start cleaning their gutters and thinking about a bushfire preparation plan.

RFS Commissioner Rob Rogers says the risk is high across NSW, including parts of Sydney that didn’t burn in 2019-20, such as Hornsby and the city’s south.

He said volunteer numbers are in a good place at more than 70,000, but the regions are struggling compared with urban areas to find recruits.

Emergency Services Minister Jihad Dib conceded hazard reduction burns are not where they’d like to be, after the RFS revealed less than a quarter of planned burns had been completed because of inclement weather.

“We had effectively, over the last year and a half, rain on average every second day,” he said.

“This is why the RFS is working so incredibly hard on trying to make sure that we get as much hazard reduction as possible.”

An extra $10 million has been set aside to hire 100 dedicated RFS crew to speed up the work before summer.

“We certainly won’t catch up before summer,” Mr Rogers said.

“But we’re targeting around 300,000 hectares for this new financial year … more than we have ever achieved before.”

It’s not all bad news. In the absence of prolonged drought conditions, fuel loads have remained relatively moist, unlike the 2019-20 season, which claimed 26 lives and torched an area of land two-thirds the size of Tasmania.

Bushfire preparedness will be a key discussion point when federal Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt meets with state and territory counterparts in three weeks.

Important work has been done to get the country ready for its next catastrophic season, Mr Watt told ABC Radio on Tuesday, including acquiring a Chinook water bomber and a new fire danger rating system.

– AAP