Wildfires threaten Aus towns
2006-12-13 11:01
Melbourne - Thousands of Australian firefighters were on Wednesday battling to save three small towns from bushfires that have ravaged an area larger than Luxembourg and destroyed 18 homes.
Prime Minister John Howard flew to fire battle zones in the island state of Tasmania and in Victoria, where the worst of the blazes is still raging over more than 3 700 square kilometres of tinder-dry bush.
More than 2 500 firefighters were waging war against the blazes in Victoria alone, where fire has raced through 4 080 square kilometres of land in the past week, officials said.
"These fires are among the worst we've had in a while because of the severity of the drought that has left the bush really dry and combustible," Kevin Monk of the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) told AFP.
Australia is suffering its worst drought in recorded history which is drying out bushland, making vast tracts of the dry continent a tinder box.
The country's annual fire season usually starts early in the new year but this year the flames have come early, an ominous omen for the months ahead.
A long, tough summer
"The fire season has started really early this year, its going to be a long, tough summer," said Monk.
He said an arc of fires burning from the northeast of Victoria to Gippsland in the south has blackened 4 080 square kilometres of land, an area 60% larger than Luxembourg and twice the size of Mauritius.
A thick pall of brown smoke from the fires hung over Melbourne, cutting visibility to four times worse than normal and sparking a poor air quality alert from the Environmental Protection Authority.
Two towns in Tasmania, where flames ripped through 18 houses overnight on Monday, were on high alert as an army of firefighters battled to slow the advance of the voracious fires after winds temporarily died down.
Fire crews were carrying out a massive backburning exercise to clear brush near the towns of St Marys, home to 1 200 people, and Irish Town, population 600, which lie southwest of Scamander where the 18 homes were destroyed.
"Our message to people is those (who are) adequately prepared (to defend their homes), we encourage them to stay with their properties to help us defend them," said Tasmanian Fire Service incident controller Ken Burns.