Australia: Wildfires spare observatory
2013-01-14 10:02
Canberra - Raging wildfires destroyed at least another 28 homes and licked
at Australia's leading optical space observatory on Monday, officials said, but
spared giant telescopes that have mapped far-away galaxies and discovered new
planets.
Less fortunate were a father and son who police arrested after a fire was
lit deliberately to destroy illegal drug laboratories they were alleged to be
running in dense bushland. Police were closing in on the drug labs when the
fire was lit.
More than 140 fires are burning across vast areas in the north and west of
New South Wales state (NSW), Australia's most populated state, and in the
island state of Tasmania despite cooler weather giving firefighters some respite.
A searing heat-wave had fuelled the fires over the past week. Only one
person, an elderly firefighter working alone in Tasmania, has died so far in
the fires.
Destroyed
The biggest blaze, with a perimeter of 100km, destroyed around 40 000ha of
bushland and 28 homes around the Warrambungle National Park in NSW.
That fire also forced the evacuation of the Siding Springs Observatory,
which houses 15 major telescopes.
Cameras inside the mountain-top observatory showed large flames and thick
smoke sweeping over it. There appeared to be little damage to telescopes and
dishes but scientists have been unable to visit the site yet to assess any
damage.
"We do not yet know what impact the extreme heat of the ash might have
on the telescopes themselves," said Erik Lithander, acting vice chancellor
of the Australian National University, which operates the observatory.
The fire damaged five buildings at the observatory, including accommodation
for visiting astronomers, but Lithander said scientists were confident the
telescopes would still work.
Siding Springs is home to the 4m Anglo-Australian Telescope, which has
surveyed 200 000 galaxies and was instrumental in confirming the existence of
dark energy.
That discovery led to Australian Brian Schmidt sharing the 2011 Nobel Prize
for physics.
The observatory has also helped find more than 30 new planets over the past
decade and is being used to map the southern sky.
Arrest
In Sydney, police arrested two men late on Sunday over a fire that broke out
in the Blue Mountains National Park west of the city last week. The fire
destroyed more than 50ha of bushland in the Blue Mountains, a popular tourist
destination.
Police said they had been aware of the illegal, outdoor drug labs but were
forced to postpone a raid due to the extreme fire danger in the area last week.
"The two sites ... were only accessible by foot and required police to
trek through tick, leech and snake-infested scrubland to reach them," NSW
police said in a statement on Monday.
Police said a father and son had been charged with "the large
commercial manufacture of a prohibited drug" and contaminating a water
catchment area. The younger man was also charged with lighting the fire.
