1 killed as Australian wildfires raze homes
Print Edition
Nearly 100 wildfires raged across Australia’s most populous state yesterday, killing one person, destroying dozens of houses and forcing hundreds of evacuations as the nation’s annual fire season got off to an unusually early start.
Milder conditions were helping firefighters after unseasonably hot temperatures and strong winds on Thursday fanned flames across the parched landscape and threatened towns surrounding Sydney.
Rural Fire Service spokesman Matt Sun said the number of fires in New South Wales state had dropped from more than 100 overnight to 89, burning across 97,000 hectares. But 25 continued to burn out of control.
Eighty-one homes were destroyed and another 37 damaged, the fire service said, with the number expected to rise as assessment teams and police move deeper into the destruction zone.
Roads and schools in the worst-hit areas were closed and officials were searching the rubble for survivors and victims. Prime Minister Tony Abbott said hundreds of homes may have been destroyed, but the exact number was still not known.
“I know some information that’s been passed to me that just in one street, there were 40 homes lost,” Rural Fire Service Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers told Nine Network television.
The Fire Service said a 63-year-old man had a fatal heart attack while he was fighting a fire at his home at Lake Munmorah, north of Sydney, late on Thursday. The man was identified by friends as Walter Linder.
Two people suffering from smoke inhalation were in intensive care at Sydney’s Concord Hospital yesterday, hospital spokeswoman Kate Benson said. Three firefighters were also treated for burns, officials said.
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