Around 100,000 people were urged to flee five Melbourne suburbs on Monday evening as Australia’s spiralling bushfire crisis killed a volunteer firefighter battling a separate blaze in the countryside. Authorities in the country’s second-biggest city downgraded an earlier bushfire emergency warning but said residents should steer clear of the blaze, which has burned through 40 hectares of grassland.
In Bundoora just 16 kilometres north of the city centre and home to two major Australian university campuses — the fire’s spread toward houses had been halted for now but it was yet to be brought under control, said Victoria Emergency. Local media showed images of water bombers flying over neighbourhoods, and families hosing down their homes in the hope of halting the fire’s spread. A volunteer firefighter died in New South Wales state and two others suffered burns while working on a blaze more than five hours south-west of Sydney, the Rural Fire Service said. It’s believed that the truck rolled when hit by extreme winds,” the agency said in a tweet.
Ten others, including two volunteer firefighters, have been killed so far this fire season. The crisis has focused attention on climate change which scientists say is creating a longer and more intense bushfire season and sparked street protests calling for immediate action to tackle global warming. While conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison belatedly acknowledged a link between the fires and climate change, he has continued his staunch support of Australia’s lucrative coal mining industry and ruled out further action to reduce emissions.
The blazes have also destroyed more than 1,000 homes and scorched more than three million hectares — an area bigger than Belgium. A heatwave sweeping the country Monday fuelled the latest destruction in Australia’s devastating summer fire season, which has been turbocharged by a prolonged drought and climate change.
Conditions worsened on Friday with high winds and temperatures soaring across the country reaching 47 degrees Celsius in Western Australia and topping 40 degrees in every region — including the usually temperate island of Tasmania
More than a dozen blazes are also raging in Victoria’s East Gippsland countryside, where authorities said “quite a number” of the 30,000 tourists visiting the usually picturesque region had heeded calls to evacuate. Some of the fires were burning so intensely that hundreds of firefighters were pulled back beyond a front estimated to stretch 1,000 kilometres. It was deemed “unsafe” for them to remain in bushland areas, Gippsland fire incident controller Ben Rankin said, describing the situation as “very intense”.
In other news – Events organiser Sibusiso Mkhulisi – Samthing Soweto must pay me Back
EVENTS organiser Sibusiso Mkhulisi is angry after Samthing Soweto allegedly didn’t pitch at his show.
I can’t disclose the actual fee but I can tell you that we paid him more than R70 000 towards his performance and we have proof of this,” said Sibusiso. The first payment was made on 28 November and the second one on 25 December. Read more
Source: eNCA
