Fire crews battle to gain the upper hand with bush fire, highway still closed

In the past 24-hours the blaze has grown by 13,685 hectares to 23,305ha.

Firefighters are "throwing everything they have" at the fire, with 42 Rural Fire Service (RFS) crews from across the region on site on Tuesday, December 12, including from Dubbo and the Central Coast to support the Narrabri RFS Bridade.

Narrabri Fire Control Centre public information officer, Kate Carter, said the expansion of the fire was due to a little run from the southside of the blaze.

"We put in a bit of a backburn on the west side to put a better containment on that edge," she said.

"It creates it's own fire and created a bit of a wind and the south side of the fire took a bit of a run. The team did get on top of it quite quickly."

Ms Carter said there were six helicopters and planes water-bombing the fire.

"They will be hitting it quite hard from the air and we've got some dozers out there to strengthen those containment lines," she said.

RFS cews have contained smaller fires in the area, including Sawpit Fire (35ha burned),Terra Delba Rd 227ha), South Boundary Rd (948ha), and the Berrygill fire in the Moore Plains Council area (367ha).

Overnight an additional fire sparked at Rocky Glen, near Coonabarabran, and has burned five hectares in remote bushland.

Tamworth RFS district coordinator Inspector Steve Carstens said the cause was a lightning strike, similar to fires in Pilliga.

"A dozer has completed a containment line around the fireground," he said.

"It is all fully contained and has the local RFS unit patrolling it today."

The Tamworth RFS has sent units to support the effects of crews around Narrabri.

Mr Carsten said the strike teams had remained in local area due to predicted lightning storms later this week.

"We try and keep as much manpower as we can in the local area just in case in of lightning storms," he said.

"We thought with the rain we'd be okay till Christmas. But now, with that big lightning storms that went through, fires are still burning, so we're expecting any fires that spark will be hard to control."