More homes destroyed in southeast wildfires

Wildfires fan argument over impact of arsonists

CANBERRA, Feb 2, (AP): Dozens of homes were destroyed overnight in Australia’s southeast but the wildfire threat had diminished by Sunday across New South Wales state and around the national capital Canberra, officials said.

Bega Valley Mayor Kristy McBain said damage in her region 240 km (150 miles) south of Canberra had yet to be assessed by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.

“There have been additional homes lost in the Bega Valley,” McBain said.

“We’re talking probably dozens more. We want to make sure we continue to support our community. This fire isn’t over yet,” she added.

She said the overnight fire brought losses of homes in the valley to more than 400 in the current fire season.

Rural Fire Service spokesman Greg Allan said damage assessment teams had yet to confirm media reports of homes lost near the village of Bumbalong, 92 km (57 miles) south of Canberra.

A dangerous fire threatened southern Canberra and the nearby village of Tharwa. The fire had burnt 55,000 hectares (136,000 acres) of forest and farmland by Sunday, with a perimeter 148 km (92 miles) long, the Australian Capital Territory Emergency Services Agency said.

Residents close to the fire front were warned on Sunday to remain vigilant.

“This morning the fire is still active. There are still days and possibly weeks of firefighting ahead of us,” Australian Capital Territory Chief Minister Andrew Barr told reporters.

He said a state of emergency for Canberra and its surrounds would remain in place until at least Monday. It is the first such emergency declaration in the Australian Capital Territory since 2003, when wildfires killed four people and destroyed almost 500 homes in a single day.

There were no fires burning at emergency level – the most dangerous on a three-tier scale – across the Australian

The church leader ordered an internal audit last year that prompted a trusted officer and other members to leave the group and struck an alliance with “forces” jealous of Quiboloy’s rise, Torreon said without elaborating.

Capital Territory or surrounding New South Wales on Sunday.

Fires across southern Australia have claimed at least 33 lives since September, destroyed more than 3,000 homes and razed more than 10.6 million hectares (26.2 million acres).

What’s to blame for scores of wildfires devastating Australia’s southeast?

There’s an increasingly bitter faceoff between those who say arson and those who fault climate change.

Each side has powerful backers and their weapons of choice are often fabrications and part-truths that have spread in time with the fires in recent weeks.

Humans burning fossil fuels and humans with criminal intent who torch a combustible landscape both factor into this unprecedented crisis.

Hotter

But just how to accurately apportion the blame has become a big political issue. The debate is made hotter by many – including some Australian lawmakers – who argue against deeper cuts to carbon gas emissions.

Firefighters blame lightning strikes for most of the major blazes in New South Wales and Victoria states, and many scientists say climate change is the main reason for fires that have claimed at least 33 lives since September, destroyed more than 3,000 homes and razed more than 10.6 million hectares (26.2 million acres ).

Still, the arson side often cites repeatedly on social media a debunked statistic that says more than 180 suspected arsonists have been arrested.

“Truly Disgusting that people would do this! God Bless Australia,” President Donald Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted. “More than 180 alleged arsonists have been arrested since the start of the bushfire season,” he added.

Although it’s been discredited by AAP FactCheck, the fact-checking division of news agency Australian Associated Press, the statistic has been

“We will face and disprove as utter lies the charges filed against the administrators” of the church in the US, he said.

Workers who managed to escape from the church told the FBI they had been sent across the US soliciting donations for

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (center), meets with Kazakh citizens who said their family members have been detained in Xinjiang, China, in a yurt at the

US Ambassador’s residence in Nur-sultan, Kazakhstan on Feb 2. (AP)

repeated thousands of times online.

A AP FactCheck, a partner in Facebook’s Third Party Fact Checking program, looking at misinformation on Facebook and Instagram, links the statistic to a statement by police in New South Wales – the worst fire-affected state – that said “legal action” had been taken against 183 people since November for “bushfire-related offenses.”

These included only 24 people charged over “deliberately-lit bushfires.” Legal action – which includes cautions – had also been taken against another 100 people for conduct that could be described as being careless during a fire ban. The statement did not detail the offenses alleged against the remaining 59 suspects.

Climate change is the main reason for the current extraordinarily destructive fire season, according to Janet Stanley, a director of Australia’s National Center for Research in Bushfire and Arson.

“In the past, there’s been little interest generally in why people light fires – whether it’s purposefully or accidentally or maliciously or recklessly – because climate change hadn’t kicked in and it really wasn’t such a problem because fire could fairly easily be put out,” said Stanley, who has studied arson-related wildfires for three decades.

“But because of climate change, this is not the case now. The conditions that make a fire very big and dangerous and spread quickly are now a great deal worse, so it’s much harder to put out the fire once it occurs than it was in the past,” she added.

Arson has long been part of Australia’s wildfire seasons, but it’s hard to estimate how big a problem it is because crime scenes are often remote and evidence is frequently destroyed.

The New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and the Victorian Crime Statistics Agency won’t release their arson data for the current wildfire season in the two worst-effected states until March.

the church’s charity and were beaten and psychologically abused if they didn’t make quotas, according to an affidavit filed in support of the charges.

The immigrants essentially became full-time workers, sometimes referred to as “miracle workers,” in a crusade to raise money for the nonprofit Children’s Joy Foundation USA, which was supposed to benefit poor children in their homeland. But the complaint said most of the money raised was used to finance church operations and the lavish lifestyle of Quiboloy.(AP)

NZ volcanic eruption toll 21:

Another person who suffered critical injuries from an eruption of a New Zealand volcano last month has died, bringing the death toll to 21, police said.

Police Deputy Commissioner John Tims said the person died Tuesday night at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital. Police have not yet identified the victim. Tims said they would do so after the person’s wider family has been informed.

There were 47 people visiting the tourist destination of White Island when the volcano erupted Dec 9, killing 13 people initially and leaving more than two dozen others hospitalized with severe burns.

Eight more people have died in hospitals in New Zealand and Australia in the weeks since the eruption. (AP)