That fire, near Outram in November last year, is one of more than 200 fires the authority has battled since it was launched in June last year.
It manages a 4.2 million hectare area including the Catlins, the Otago coastline, and inland Otago, all of which remains in a prohibited fire season.
A prohibited season requires a total fire ban and/or the suspension of operations that pose a fire risk.
Gas barbecues are permitted but open air fires and fireworks or pyrotechnics are not allowed.
The authority's principal rural fire officer, Stephanie Rotarangi, said the prohibited season was expected to remain in place for another four weeks.
During January, the authority attended 72 vegetation fires across Otago larger than 20sq m in size, not including other smaller fires it attended or other incidents such as assisting ambulance officers or car accidents.
In comparison, in the six months to the end of December, it attended 136 vegetation fires in Otago.
''That is a lot of vegetation fires.''
January's fires were an indicator of the severity of the conditions.
Dr Rotarangi said the authority, which is funded by district and city councils and the Department of Conservation, was funded to prevent fires, to train and equip volunteers and to manage fires in the landscape, but not to put fires out.
Its primary focus was education, to ensure fires did not start.
The authority could recover costs from any fire it attended.
It used discretion on a fire-by-fire basis and various factors determined if it would charge those responsible, but if charged, people were legally bound to pay.
Those factors included if volunteers had to travel outside their area to fight a fire, or if outside resources such as earthmoving equipment and helicopters had to be called in.
''At the moment, we have approximately $272,000 we have charged to landowners over 19 events since we started.''
So far, four had paid.
As for the outstanding money, it was not affecting how the authority carried out its duties.
However, it was ''money that is not being spent on training and equipment, but we have to follow a process'', Dr Rotarangi said.
If people were charged, there was a three-month period before cost recovery was handed over to the National Rural Fire Authority.
Dr Rotarangi said the first summer of the expanded authority had been ''very positive'' so far.
''The benefits of the enlarged district have meant that we have had a larger pool of resources to call on and that means we can work more much more effectively and cohesively.''
That wider pool of resources had been needed, she said.
Another ''big part'' of the authority's work was issuing fire permits.
It had issued just under 1500 so far, and Dr Rotarangi was pleased with how its systems had worked.
Areas of improvement would be considered at the end of the fire season.
