A SEASONED Southern Downs rural fire officer has called the Ranger Rd fire one of the most dangerous he's seen in all his years of operation.

More than 20 fire and emergency service units were tasked to tackle the fire, which burned until late Sunday night.

The Glen Rural Fire Service first officer John Skinner said Warwick had the wind to thank, as well as the tireless efforts of dozens of volunteers, that the blaze wasn't far worse.

"At one point, at around 1pm on Sunday, my rural unit and an urban unit were putting out ember fires near where Ranger Rd meets the highway," he said.

"When all of a sudden, a massive wall of fire went through the tree tops at a very rapid rate.

"The wind was so strong, and the fire came right over the top of the two trucks.

"The heat was so intense, the flames hit me up the side of the head and my rural firefighter who was on the other side of the fence putting out spotfires, had the plastic and the rubber on his goggles and helmet catch fire."

Mr Skinner said they immediately realised they'd lost the fire.

"No amount of water was going to put it out," he said.

"The wind got behind it and it became a raging inferno so quickly.

"We were still the only rural unit there at that time."

What followed was a scramble to get in front of the fire, which was quickly getting out of hand.

"We drove up to Kingsleigh Road, found some high ground and saw the fire coming," Mr Skinner said.

"We saw where we could get a fire-break in and pretty soon after that a council grader arrived and helped us put that break in from Ranger Road south east all the way down to the highway."

To the relief of everyone one the scene, 200m before the fire break, the wind changed and turned the fire back on itself.

"If the fire had jumped the break and got into the grassland, with the wind behind it, I don't know we could have stopped it at the speed it was travelling," Mr Skinner said.

Only a few kilometres from the southern outskirts of Warwick, Mr Skinner and his crew got lucky with a change in wind direction.

Despite other local media outlets reporting the original permitted burn was signed off by a local officer, Mr Skinner said this wasn't the case.

"It was okayed by the area director in Toowoomba, and Saturday was a very still night," he said.

"It was a large burn, over 100m long and Firecom received several calls about it from people travelling on the New England Hwy.

"We were tasked to go out and have a look."

Mr Skinner said despite the lack of wind embers from the burn still travelled into a neighbouring property.

"We could see the fire, about 30m past a fence in impenetrable scrub.

"We backed the truck up and put it out, but once the wind got up in the morning, it didn't take much to start things off again."

"Mr Skinner and his crew spent nine hours fighting the fire on Sunday.

Crews were finally called off the task at about 10pm Sunday night and returned on yesterday to monitor the area.