Fire officers used a flame thrower to clear dense scrub on Black Mountain yesterday, as they burned through 20 hectares of potentially hazardous fuel.
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The flame thrower - the Phoenix - is a new weapon for fire officers as they embark on a long program of hazard reduction before the bushfire season.
The Territory and Municipal Services Fire Management Unit has had the flame thrower for about a year but has only just started to use it near urban areas.
The equipment shoots jets of flame up to 15 metres and uses a specialised fuel mixture to set scrub ablaze.
Fire Management Unit manager Neil Cooper said it dramatically cut down on the time it took to conduct hazard reduction burns.
''It enables us to get a fair stretch of fire line in fairly quickly, and it's great in these fuels with higher moisture content,'' Mr Cooper said.
''We did in six days what it would have taken 32 days to do with manpower down at Namadgi [National Park],'' he said.
''We're also using sprinklers as a containment line, which we haven't used before, from a portable dam.''
The new technology will help government fire officers work their way through a large hazard reduction program through the rest of the year.
About 1200 hectares of fuel will be removed from 700 plots to protect the ACT against bushfires.
''What we're conscious of is that fuel will dry out at some stage, so our business goes 12 months of the year,'' Mr Cooper said.
''Most of our work is done in the off-shoulder periods, the spring and the autumn, and through winter,'' he said. ''It's anyone's guess as to what the season will be like next year, but we're prepared.''
The flame thrower helps fire officers access steep or difficult areas of scrub.
But the gear encountered some difficulty early in yesterday's prescribed burn.
Blockages forced fire officers to switch to the standard hand-held fire starters about five minutes into the burn.
There are three officers trained to use the flame thrower.
''It's for skilled operators and people who are experienced in putting fire into the environment,'' Mr Cooper said. ''It's not just about driving along and throwing flames into the paddock, it's about working out the spacing … to achieve an outcome that reduces fuel but doesn't raze the environment.''
