Simon Heemstra
NSW Rural Fire Service
About
Dr Simon Heemstra joined the RFS as a as a volunteer member of the Woronora Bush Fire Brigade in 1994 and completed a PhD on bush fire patchiness through the university of Wollongong in 2007. He commenced as a staff member in the RFS in 2002. He established and managed the Environment, the Planning and the Predictive Services sections. These teams were responsible for state research policy and training for areas including Bush Fire Risk Management, Community Planning, Prescribed Burn Planning, Environmental Assessment, Fire Behaviour Analysis and Bush Fire Impact Analysis. Simon has been Chair of the AFAC Predictive Services Group, a member of the National Fire Danger Ratings Review working group, Chair of the Climate Change Working Group and lead end user for the Bush Fire and Natural Hazards CRC Fire Behaviour Research Stream. In 2020 Simon took up the role as Manager Hazard Preparedness and Response National in the Bureau of Meteorology, establishing a decision support unit in the national situation room in Canberra. In 2022, Simon joined AFAC as Director National Projects and Innovation and in 2023 he returned to the RFS in his current role as Director Community Resilience.