‘Unprecedented’ bushfires, floods
SOARING temperatures near 40°C and strong winds exacerbated more than 130 bushfires burning across Queensland in Australia, officials have said, urging thousands to flee their homes.
Authorities have declared an emergency in the township of Gracemere and Stanwell, southwest of Rockhampton, due to the powerful and fast-moving bushfire, Queensland police said yesterday.
It means mandatory evacuations for about 8000 residents.
The state authorities have also raised the fire danger warning in the eastern and central region to the highest level – “catastrophic” – for the first time ever.
“We have never, ever in this state been in this situation before,” Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters. “Unprecedented, uncharted,” she added.
Firefighters have been battling for nearly a week to contain the fires.
Queensland education authorities have announced the temporary closure of more than three dozen schools and five childcare centres in the region.
“We have a plan and we are going to follow that plan. That is why we have taken the urgent action of closing schools,” Palaszczuk said.
The bushfires have been fuelled by a dry, hot air mass and strong, gusty westerly winds, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said.
The state has also been experiencing a massive heatwave and thunderstorms with lightning.
The bushfires across Queensland started late last week. Several properties have already been destroyed, but there have been no fatalities so far.
Earlier this week, a massive bushfire in the Deepwater region, described as a “firestorm”, also sparked mass evacuations. In contrast, torrential rain and gale-force winds lashed Australia’s biggest city, Sydney, yesterday causing commuter chaos, flooding streets, railway stations and homes, grounding flights and leaving hundreds of people without electricity.
Police called on motorists to stay off the roads. One person was killed in a car crash and two police officers seriously injured when a tree fell on them as they helped a stranded driver.
Greg Transell, an office manager in Sydney’s north, said that strong winds caused widespread disruption to the tower block office where he works.
“I started to go upstairs to see if there was any damage and next minute there was an almighty bang and it ripped panels off the roof in the warehouse,” said Transell.
The BOM said Sydney received more than 100mm of rain in just a few hours, a level that the country’s most populous city would normally get through the whole of November.
“That’s the sort of rainfall you’d expect to see once every 100 years,” said Ann Farrell, the bureau’s state manager.
The rain offered a welcomed respite to farmers who have suffered a sustained drought in recent months, but it caused major disruptions.
Sydney airport, the country’s busiest, said 130 flights had been cancelled or delayed after it was forced to close two of its three runways.
Ausgrid, the nation’s biggest electricity network, said the storm had cut power to 8100 customers in Sydney and the central coast area to its north.
By late afternoon, 1700 homes and businesses remained without power. BLACK people face “pervasive” discrimination throughout the EU, according to a report released yesterday by the bloc’s agency for fundamental rights.
People of African descent in Europe have poorer housing and access to jobs, and on the streets many suffer from racial harassment and police checks, the report said.
Up to 76% of younger black people are not in work, education or training in some EU countries, compared to 8% of the population as a whole. About 45% of black people live in overcrowded housing, compared to 17% of the general population. Only 15% are homeowners, as opposed to 70% of the general population. Almost one in three black people reported racial harassment.