Navy evacuates hundreds trapped by Australian fires
Residents’ fury at PM Scott Morrison ‘was probably deserved’, says minister as death toll rises to 19
THE Australian navy evacuated by sea hundreds of people trapped by the country’s bushfire crisis yesterday.
Tens of thousands have fled their homes in New South Wales and Victoria
as the death toll has risen to 19, with 28 people missing in Victoria.
HMAS Choules and Sycamore took 963 people from the town of Mallacoota in Victoria, to safety at Western Port. For days, 4,000 people were trapped on the beach before fires subsided.
In New South Wales early on Friday, more than 140 fires were burning.
More than 1,360 homes have now been destroyed and 3.6 million hectares burnt through in that state alone.
People in an area, stretching hundreds of kilometres from Nowra to the
Victorian border and west to Kosciuszko, have been urged to leave.
High temperatures and strong winds have made the daunting task faced by thousands of fire fighters even worse.
The New South Wales transport minister Andrew Constance, a member of prime minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party, said that angry locals in Cobargo who confronted the Prime Minister on Wednesday “gave him the welcome he probably deserved”.
Mr Constance, who escaped losing his home when fire tore through Malua
Bay, said he didn’t know Mr Morrison had planned to visit the area.
Gladys Berejiklian, the New South Wales premier, said: “There’s no doubt people are justified in feeling angry”.
“I don’t begrudge anyone who is on the ground,” she told radio station 2GB on Friday morning. “Andrew is a good friend of mine and he’s just seen the sheer devastation in his community.”
Yesterday morning, Greg Mullins, a former New South Wales fire chief, told ABC Radio: “I’m angry about the prime minister’s response. It reminds me of
President Trump, when there’s multiple shootings, saying ‘there’s nothing to do with guns’. We have to talk about climate change.”
Late on Thursday, Daniel Andrews, Victoria’s premier, declared an official state of disaster for six Local Government Areas and the Alpine Resort, which gives the government special powers to deal with the crisis. It is the first time the powers have been used.
The declaration will allow forced evacuations and permit emergency services to take over properties. So far, evacuations have been voluntary. “If you can leave, then you must [leave],” the Mr Andrews said.
Andrew Crisp, the state’s Emergency Management Commissioner, said humidity levels were “unusually low”, at less than 10 per cent, in fire-affected areas in the state’s east.
“What that means is that fires will travel at night. People talk about fires five years ago and that was not the case – generally fires overnight would settle down and you could rest and regroup but that’s not what we’re seeing.”
‘Fires will travel at night. Generally fires overnight would settle down and you could rest and regroup but that’s not what we’re seeing’