Firefighters battled scores of bushfires raging across southeast Australia with officials evacuating national parks and warning that blistering temperatures and high winds had led to “catastrophic” fire conditions in some areas.Thousands of firefighters were on standby across the nation’s most populous state of New South Wales, where fire authorities said conditions were at catastrophic threat levels – the most severe rating available – in parts of the state.
Three different areas of the state are now at that “catastrophic” level of danger, Al Jazeera’s Andrew Thomas reports from Sydney.
“I have just spoken to someone in one of the most at risk areas and he tells me that authorities have just given them an hour to get out,” he said.
All state forests and national parks were closed as a precaution and total fire bans were in place with temperatures expected to reach 45C in some areas.
“We are shaping up for one of the worst fire danger days on record,” New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said.
Introduced after the 2009 Black Saturday firestorm in Victoria, which claimed 173 lives, a catastrophic rating means fires will be uncontrollable, unpredictable and fast-moving, with evacuation the only safe option.
There are fears that the city of Sydney could be threatened next. But so far, the fires are in “relatively unpopulated areas,” Thomas said.
Of 100 fires burning across the state, 21 are uncontained, although none was posing any immediate threat.
“But clearly, under today’s conditions, we are concerned with those and we will be monitoring them very carefully,” Fitzsimmons said.
A total fire ban is in place throughout the state with temperatures forecast to peak at 45 Celsius, with Sydney set to swelter in 43-degree heat.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she was being briefed continuously and urged caution.
There were also extreme conditions in Victoria, with one fire at Kentbruck in the state’s southwest doubling in size overnight with about 500 firefighters and 10 aircraft battling to stop it threatening rural communities.
A handful was out of control and Tasmanian Fire Service station officer Phil Douglas said authorities were ready for possible evacuations at Lake Repulse and Forcett.
No deaths have been reported so far from the fires that are a regular occurrence in vast but sparsely populated and arid Australia, particularly in the hot summer months between December and February.
Source: Al-Jazeera