ACT Rural Fire Service head Andrew Stark has quit for an interstate job, leaving in mid February.
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ACT Emergency Services Agency commissioner Dominic Lane confirmed the resignation on Tuesday, saying Mr Stark was taking up a job as deputy chief officer with the South Australia Country Fire Service based in Adelaide.
He would finish on February 16, seeing Canberra "through the majority of the current bushfire season", Mr Lane said.
The agency's leadership team would "cover any acting arrangement that may need to be put in place" after his departure before a new chief officer was appointed, he said.
Mr Stark has been chief officer of the ACT Rural Fire Service since 2009. Before then, he managed the far south coast area for the NSW fire service.
In October, Mr Stark warned of a long, hot and potentially dangerous fire season this year.
The strongest El Nino weather pattern since 1997 was expected to bring hotter, drier days and more powerful winds in November and December, he said. Forty thousand ACT homes were in bushfire-prone areas, within about 100 metres of significant bushland, with high fuel loads in all of the territory's bushland areas.
Mr Lane said Mr Stark had led the Rural Fire Service through a time of significant change in fire policy after the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria.
