Australian fire kills firefighter, 100,000 residents urged to flee | Climate News

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The fire crisis kills volunteer firefighters as authorities urge residents of five Melbourne suburbs to evacuate.

Some 100,000 people were urged to flee five suburbs of Melbourne on Monday evening as Australia’s spiraling crisis resulted in the death of a volunteer firefighter fighting a separate fire in the countryside.

Authorities in the country’s second-largest city lowered an emergency warning against previous fires, but said residents should stay away from the fire, which has burned 40 acres of meadows.

In Bundoora, just 16 kilometers north of the city center and home to two major Australian university campuses, the spread of the fire to homes had stopped for now, but had yet to be controlled, he said. Vic Emergency.

Local media showed images of water bombers flying over neighborhoods and families hiding their homes in hopes of stopping the spread of the fire.

A car that was destroyed by wildfires is near a house in the town of Balmoral in Sydney [David Gray/Getty Images]

A volunteer firefighter died in the state of New South Wales and two others suffered burns while working in a blaze more than five hours south-west of Sydney, according to the Rural Fire Service.

“The truck is believed to have rolled when it was hit by extreme winds,” the agency said in a tweet.

Ten more people, including two volunteer firefighters, have been killed so far this fire season.

The flames have destroyed more than 1,000 homes and burned more than three million hectares (7.4 million acres).

A heat wave that ravaged the country on Monday fueled the latest destruction of Australia’s devastating summer fire season, which has been turbocharged by a prolonged drought.

Conditions worsened on Friday, with strong winds and temperatures across the country, reaching 47 ° C (117 ° F) in Western Australia and surpassing 40 ° C in all regions, including the lonely temperate island of Tasmania. .

More than a dozen flames are also spreading in Victoria East Gippsland camp, where authorities said “force” of the 30,000 tourists visiting the normally picturesque region had heeded calls to evacuate.

Some of the fires burned so intensely that hundreds of firefighters were retreated beyond an estimated front that stretched for 1,000 km (600 miles).

It was considered “unsafe” for them to remain in the bush areas, said Ben Rankin, Gippsland’s fire incident handler, who described the situation as “very intense”.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was harshly criticized for spending a holiday in Hawaii as forest fires wore on and he was forced to interrupt his trip to visit affected communities and volunteer firefighters fighting the flames. [Wolter Peeters/EPA]

Craig Lapsley, a former Victorian emergency management commissioner, said it was a critical day for people at risk.

“It’s a heat wave,” he told Al Jazeera. “It’s 40 degrees in most places and if it’s not 40, it’s over 40 and the winds are very strong, so this is obviously the recipe for fires. The heat of the day warms the forest and the grass, and then the wind comes and causes the fire ”.

The crisis has focused on climate change, which scientists say is creating a longer and more intense bushfire season. The country is also facing a prolonged and devastating drought.

Although Conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison belatedly acknowledged the link between fires and climate change, he has continued his strong support for Australia’s lucrative coal mining industry and has ruled out further action to reduce emissions.

A petition to cancel Sydney’s famous New Year’s Eve fireworks and use the money to fight the wildfires that are ringing in the city has surpassed 270,000 signatures, but officials say the show will continue.

Sydney has spent A $ 6.5 million ($ 4.5 million) on fireworks this year, a fund that Change.org’s petition argues would be better spent on supporting volunteer firefighters and farmers who they suffer the brutal drought.

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