‘Looking into the gates of Hades’
For the latest on the fires go to nzherald.co.nz Catastrophic fire warning in place for Sydney and coastal communities as NSW residents told it’s too late to flee
More than 100 bush fires continued to burn in NSW and Queensland overnight, many of them out of control, as much of Australia’s east coast literally went up in smoke. At least 170 properties have been destroyed in NSW since the fires began last week. Weather conditions yesterday continued to hamper efforts to fight the fires. By late afternoon a suburb on the north shore of Sydney, and many areas in the north of the state, were burning.
Northland woman Bonnie Callagher, now living at Harrington on NSW’s mid-north coast, described 25m flames advancing towards her home as ‘like looking into the gates of Hades’.
And with high winds expected to hit Sydney in the evening before striking more northern areas later in the night and early morning, firefighters, officials and politicians were fearing the worst as we went to press.
Ferocious wildfires were burning at emergency-level intensity across Australia’s most populous state yesterday as authorities warned most populations in their paths that there was no longer time to flee.
New South Wales state is under a week-long state of emergency, a declaration that gives the Rural Fire Service sweeping powers to control resources and direct other government agencies in its efforts to battle fires. The worst fires yesterday emerged in the state’s northeast, where three people have died and more than 150 homes have been destroyed since Friday.
Last night, a fire was reported in Sydney’s north at South Turramurra. A catastrophic fire warning was in place for Sydney, Australia’s largest city, as well as coastal communities to the city’s north and south.
A further 51 fires were reported in Queensland and in Western Australia, on the other side of the continent, a bush fire was out of control north of Perth.
Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said many people had heeded his warning and evacuated their homes in the danger zone well ahead of the escalating fire threat.
“We’ve got very tight, winding roads into a lot of these areas which is why we talked about leaving early as the safest option,” Fitzsimmons said.
“The last thing we want to do is be managing mass evacuations in pretty difficult to access areas and running the risk of having a whole bunch of congested roadways and seeing people incinerated in their cars,” he said.
In Sydney workers were urged to go home early and avoid nonessential travel because the road and rail network could be affected by extreme heat and strong winds.
Of 71 fires burning across New South Wales, 11 were rated as emergencies and burning out of control by mid-afternoon. That’s the largest number across the state in decades, apart from Friday when an unprecedented 17 emergency fires blazed.
“It is too late to leave on most of these fires and sheltering is now your only option as fire approaches,” Fitzsimmons said.
Winds were reaching 80km/h in some areas and were expected to gather pace as the day progressed. There were reports of potential destruction of homes south of the town of Taree near where a woman died in her home on Friday, Fitzsimmons said.
More than 600 schools and technical colleges were closed because they are close to woodlands at risk of fire.
The Australian fire season, which peaks during the summer, has started early after an unusually warm and dry winter.
More than 1 million hectares of forest and farmland had already burned across the state this fire season, more than three times the 280,000ha that burned during the entire last season.
The fires are sparking political battles over the role that climate change may be playing in the bushfire crisis.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has championed Australia’s coal industry and carved out a more contrarian position on climate change, has downplayed any ties to climate change, while environmentalists and opposition parties contend these fires are in part the consequence of global warming.
Australia is one of the world’s top coal producers.
On Monday, in an appearance on ABC Radio, Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack blamed “raving inner-city lunatics” for linking the fires to climate change.
National backbencher Barnaby Joyce claimed two of the victims who were killed at the weekend had “most likely” voted for the Greens.
Morrison and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann have both denounced the comments.
Joyce made the comments as he sought to attack Greens politicians for what he said was a failure to support hazard-reduction burning during winter.
In recent days, the Greens have attacked the Coalition for failing to have any climate-change policies that could have prevented the loss of lives in the fires raging along Australia’s east coast.
Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John took the attack further in Parliament yesterday, where he accused senators of being “arsonists”.
However, in the climate research literature, the links between a warming climate and increased bushfire risk in Australia are robust and uncontroversial.
The scientific evidence shows clear links between trends in Australian climate and fire danger, although natural climate variability, such as El Nino and other cycles, as well as development patterns play a role as well.
According to a comprehensive 2015 federal climate report, the ongoing bush fires are burning in places in areas of Australia that are likely to see a rise in the average forest fire danger index and the number of days with severe fire danger.
The study pinned these trends on human-caused climate change, in large part because a warming climate can dry out vegetation faster, worsening the influence of droughts.
Studies published since have also warned that one of the clearest findings of climate research is that the fire season will lengthen in large parts of Australia, and that conditions will become more conducive to severe fires as the climate warms and vegetation dries out faster and more extensively.
It is too late to leave on most of these fires and sheltering is now your only option as fire approaches.
Shane Fitzsimmons Rural Fire Service Commissioner