Huge Bushfires: Australia urges another mass evacuation
Australian authorities urged another mass evacuation across the heavily populated southeast yesterday as a return of hot weather fanned huge bushfires threatening several towns and communities.
Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews urged communities to be on alert ahead of the extreme conditions.
“If you receive instructions to leave, then you must leave,” Andrews said in a televised briefing. “That is the only way to guarantee your safety.”
Parts of Kangaroo Island, a wildlife-rich tourist spot off the southeast coast where Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday made a plea for foreign tourists not to be deterred by the fires, were again evacuated yesterday.
“I urge everyone to heed warnings, follow advice, and to head to the east part of the island, which is deemed safe at this point,” South Australia Fire Chief Mark Jones said in a separate briefing in Adelaide.
A third of the island has been destroyed.
Twenty-seven people have been killed this fire season, according to the federal government, as the monster fires have scorched through more than 10.3 million hectares (25.5 million acres) of land, an area the size of South Korea.
Thousands have been made homeless and thousands have had to evacuate repeatedly because of the volatility of the fires.
Residents of the coastal town of Mallacoota, where thousands of people were stranded on a beach for days until a military evacuation that only ended on Wednesday, were among those again advised to flee.
“If we evacuate, where do we go?” said Mark Tregellas, who spent New Year’s Eve on a boat ramp as fire destroyed much of his town, and one of about 1,000 people who decided to stay.
“The electricity is slowly coming back but everyone is reliant on generators, and fuel for those is very limited,” he told Reuters by telephone from his house.
“People have now run out of petrol so most in the town are now riding on bicycles.”
Despite cooler weather and rainfall providing some relief in some bushfire-affected areas this week, almost 150 fires were still burning in worst-hit New South Wales and Victoria, the huge continent’s most populated regions, reports AFP.
Firefighters have been taking advantage of this week’s milder weather as they race to contain bushfires ahead of today.
They have been clearing vegetation and carrying out controlled burns in an effort to protect areas like the coastal town of Eden, where a large bushfire is burning to the south.
“It only takes a spark to get a fire burning, and that’s our concern for tomorrow,” Rural Fire Service superintendent John Cullen told a local council briefing.
The Rural Fire Service said a helicopter pilot who had been waterbombing a fire in the area ditched his aircraft into a dam yesterday afternoon, managing to free himself and swim to shore.
NSW announced yesterday it would spend Aus$1.2 billion (US$680 million) on restoring infrastructure in fire-ravaged areas. That comes on top of a separate Aus$2 billion ($1.4 billion) national recovery fund earmarked to help devastated communities.
“We are always standing shoulder-to-shoulder with those who have been impacted by the devastating fires, this catastrophe which has come to New South Wales and we are stepping up to make sure we provide that support,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.
The bushfire toll has not been limited to human losses -- the blazes have also wreaked wide-ranging environmental damage.