GPs working on the front line of Australia’s bushfire crisis are asking why so few GPs in the communities under threat are embedded in the emergency and evacuation plans.

Last week, Dr Kate Manderson was warned by authorities of the grave fire dangers in communities between Ulladulla and Nowra on the NSW South Coast.

The owner of four practices in the area, Dr Manderson says she has the necessary background to help, having been involved in disaster response through 20 years of military service, including deployment in the South Pacific and Middle East in the 2000s.

But despite setting up an early trauma care facility to assess and stabilise patients badly injured by the fires, she was told by the emergency operation centre she was not “part of our protocols and you’re not part of our team, so we can’t use you”.