Australians face new fire danger
Wind and heat threaten hard-hit towns in New South Wales and Victoria
EDEN, AUSTRALIA — Thousands of people fled their homes and helicopters dropped supplies to towns at risk of nearby wildfires as hot, windy conditions Friday threatened already fire-ravaged southeastern Australian communities.
The danger is centred on New South Wales and Victoria, Australia’s most populous states, where temperatures and winds spiked after a few days of relatively benign conditions, causing two large blazes to merge. The new “mega fire” measures about 6,000 square kilometres, larger than Prince Edward Island and nearly the size of the Greater Toronto Area.
The blaze, located south of the Snowy Mountains along the border between Victoria and New South Wales, merged near the village of Tooma, southwest of Canberra, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The New South Wales Rural Fire Service had warned that coastal towns south of Sydney including Eden, Batemans Bay and Nowra could again be under threat weeks after losing homes to the fires. By Friday evening, the wildfires burning in that region were holding within containment lines, but winds could cause them to flare anew, Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told reporters.
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the extent of any damage from the fires wouldn’t be known until Saturday morning.
“We know it’s going to be a long and difficult night,” Berejiklian said.
In neighbouring Victoria, evacuation orders were issued in alpine areas, and Premier Daniel Andrews pleaded with residents to heed alerts and avoid complacency even though no fresh destruction was being reported.
“Despite this unprecedented fire activity, we have nobody who is unaccounted for, we have no further people who have died, and we have no further communities who have been cut off,” Andrews told reporters. “Now, all of those things can change and that is perhaps the most powerful reminder that we have to remain vigilant.”
The unprecedented fire crisis in southeast Australia has claimed at least 26 lives, destroyed more than 2,000 homes and scorched an area twice the size of the U.S. state of Maryland since September.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday that the military was on standby to help firefighters and emergency agencies.
The military has already been involved in the unfolding crisis by clearing roads closed by fallen trees, burying dead cattle and sheep and providing fodder to surviving livestock.
Fire crews throughout the region were bracing for a long, rocky night. In the southeastern New South Wales town of Candelo, Nathan Barnden, a divisional commander with the Rural Fire Service, was preparing to head to the nearby township of Burragate with his team to protect the community from a fire that was marching north.
The fire had breached containment lines in one area, and officials were worried that predicted winds of 60 to 100 km/h could push it into populated areas.
“We’ll be there to help defend them through the night,” Barnden said. “We’ve been warned that we could be up there ‘til the morning. … There is a risk that we’ll be cut off and we’ll have to stay there throughout the time.”
In the small village of Towamba in southern New South Wales, most residents had evacuated by Friday, after firefighters warned them they should get out, said John Nightingale, a volunteer firefighter with the Rural Fire Service.
Last week, some houses in the village were destroyed by a fire that turned the afternoon sky first a deep magenta and then pitch black, Nightingale said.
“Late at night, you could hear the rumbling of the fire,” he said. “It was very terrifying.”