AS Albury boiled in its record 46 degrees on Saturday, it was minus 10 degrees in the hometown of a US officer central to our fire fight.
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Nick Yturri joined the team at the NSW Rural Fire Service control centre in Albury on Saturday as a planning officer.
He had arrived in Brisbane on New Year's Day as part of a contingent of 44 American and 22 Canadian fire specialists.
After realising their expertise was needed in NSW, Mr Yturri was part of a group deployed in the Riverina.
"My role here is to deal with the strategic planning of what we're going to do on the ground with the operations, so we're looking at what's happening today, tomorrow and the next day," Mr Yturri said.
"We're looking at the next three days and things like containment and controls lines."
Generally the fire approach is not wildly different in Australia from the US, but Mr Yturri noted there were marked contrasts in the environment with his home state of Idaho.
He hails from Sawtooth National Forest which covers the Rocky Mountains and includes wilderness where Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway fished and hunted.
"There's small differences (in the fire approaches in NSW and Idaho), but overall you're all working together for the one cause," Mr Yturri said.
"Where I'm from I live at high elevations with large timbered forests, over here it's much more lower elevations and very volatile fuels with the eucalyptus and the weather.
"This time of year at home we have freezing temperatures and over here it's 40 degrees Celsius with winds and humidity."
Mr Yturri is employed by the US Forest Service and is a zone assistant fire management officer with 25 years experience in tackling blazes.
In the US, he been involved in fire fights from California to Montana and up to Alaska.
He has been joined in Albury by Canadian firefighter Derek Gough, who hails from the province of Alberta.
It is unclear when they will return home.
The RFS regional headquarters in Albury has 25 day-time staff working out of it, it would usually have five.
About 18 are toiling across the night shift at the hub near the entrance to Albury airport.
Meanwhile, a strike team of Western Australian firefighters has been assisting with the Green Valley, Talmalmo blaze east of Albury.
The group of 25 flew over and joined the campaign aboard NSW fire trucks on Saturday.
It is expected they will be replaced by another crew of Sandgropers from middle of this week.
