New Year brings more fire fears around Sydney
Date: 01-Jan-02
Country: AUSTRALIA
Author: Paul Tait
Many of thousands of firefighters battling about 100 blazes put New Year's celebrations aside and worked through the night to prepare for extreme summer weather expected later on Tuesday.
Extensive backburning operations continued in a bid to starve some of the worst fires of fuel.
Five major fires are still burning to the south, west and north of Sydney. Firefighters say those blazes are contained but could easily flare again with a return to adverse weather.
Rural Fire Service spokesman John Winter said high temperatures and wind gusts of up to 70 km (43 miles) an hour were forecast on Tuesday.
"That sort of wind behaviour is going to lead to erratic fire behaviour and that will certainly cause crews some concerns because it makes it very difficult to plan where the fire is going to run to," Winter told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
Rural Fire Service Commissioner Phil Koperberg said a return to harsh, dry conditions which whipped the fires on Christmas Day would almost certainly see the blazes breach containment lines.
Blazes dubbed the "Black Christmas" fires have destroyed 150 homes, devastated about 250,000 hectares (625,000 acres) of bush and killed thousands of sheep. Police believe many of the fires were deliberately lit and have set up a special arson taskforce.
There have been no serious injuries, but dozens of firefighters have been treated for smoke inhalation.
The blazes ringing Sydney are the most intense the city has experienced since 1994. Four people died then when fires entered the city's bush suburbs.
Some light rain which fell around the city on Monday failed to have a significant impact on the fires. RFS spokesman Winter said small amounts of rain could potentially interfere with backburning operations.
Horror weather conditions forecast for the
weekend largely failed to eventuate, although strong wind gusts fanned some of the fires briefly on Monday.
Hundreds of people were evacuated from the Hill Top suburb southwest of Sydney late on Monday but were allowed to return to their homes early on Tuesday.
New South Wales Premier Bob Carr celebrated the arrival of the New Year at a street party with some of those who lost their homes in one street in the Blue Mountains township of Warrimoo.
"The good people of Cross Street deserve to have a drink and a prayer," Carr told local radio in the street where six houses were lost last week. "I admire their spirit tremendously."
Sydney woke to clearer, sunny day on Tuesday only two days after a thick pall of smoke hung over the city, limiting visibility to several hundred metres and pushing air pollution readings to some of the highest levels recorded in the city.
Australia's most deadly bushfires occured on "Ash Wednesday" February 16, 1983, when a total of 76 people died in fires which swept across the southern states of Victoria South Australia.
Australian insurers said the cost of the bushfires remains at about A$50 million ($25.52 million), compared with A$56 million ($28.59 million) in 1994.