Spotter › NSW

Fire alerts for New South Wales

Live fire incidents near you across Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, the Hunter, the Illawarra and regional NSW, and your family’s position against them. Fire only — read what is and is not covered before you rely on it.

What Spotter does and does not carry in NSW

Be clear about this before you rely on it. In New South Wales, Spotter imports major fire incidents only. Not every call-out, and not flood, not storm. In Victoria it carries the full mix of fires, rescues, hazardous material incidents and flooding; in NSW it does not.

So keep your state’s official emergency app, which carries the formal warning levels and every hazard type, and treat it as the source of record. What Spotter adds on top is the thing those apps do not do: it tells you how close a fire is to your people, not just to a street address.

New South Wales and fire

New South Wales is where the gap between a city and the bush is smallest. Greater Sydney is ringed by national park — the Blue Mountains to the west, Royal to the south, Ku-ring-gai Chase and Garigal to the north — so a fire in bushland can be a fire at the end of a suburban street. The same pattern repeats on the Central Coast, around Newcastle and the Hunter, behind Wollongong, and through the Shoalhaven and the Northern Rivers.

What tends to happen here

The fire season runs longer here than most people plan for. Through the 2019–20 summer, fires burned across the state for months rather than days, and the coastal strip between Sydney and the Victorian border was affected repeatedly. The practical problem for a household is rarely one dramatic night; it is weeks of not knowing whether today is the day that matters.

Spotter shows what is live near you across Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, the Hunter, the Illawarra and regional NSW — including Sydney, Penrith, Campbelltown, Hornsby, Sutherland, Gosford, Wyong, Newcastle, Maitland, Wollongong, Nowra, Lithgow, Bathurst, Wagga Wagga and Lismore — ordered by how close it is rather than by when it was filed. When nothing is live nearby it says “Nothing reported near you”, never that you are safe.

Getting around

Sydney's geography means a fire can close a single road that a whole community depends on. Saved places give you an arrival notice at Home, School or Work so you know people got where they were going, and the family page says plainly how recent each person's position is rather than implying it knows more than it does.

The family side works everywhere

Which official feeds Spotter carries varies by state. The family features do not: the map, saved places, arrival notices for Home, School and Work, the one-tap check-in and the “Are you OK?” message work anywhere in Australia. Every connection needs mutual approval, you can pause sharing or switch to an approximate suburb-level position at any time, and removing someone takes effect immediately without telling them.