Firefighters battle explosion of wildfires in Australia
Pastor Dale Morgan
Wednesday December 13, 11:50 AM
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Firefighters battle explosion of wildfires in Australia*
Residents of at least three small Australian towns braced for disaster
as bushfires that have ravaged an area twice the size of Mauritius
roared towards them.
Prime Minister John Howard was set to visit fire battle zones in the
island state of Tasmania and in Victoria, where the worst of the blazes
is raging over 3,700 square kilometres (1,480 square miles) of
tinder-dry bush.
Two towns in Tasmania, where flames ripped through 18 houses overnight
on Monday, were on high alert as an army of firefighters took advantage
of cooler weather to help slow the advance of the voracious fires.
Fire crews were carrying out a massive backburning exercise to clear
brush near the towns of St Mary's and Irish Town, population 600, which
lie southwest of Scamander, where the homes were destroyed.
"The big concern now is everything south of the fire," said Danny Reid,
of the Tasmanian Fire Service (TFS). "It is pushing the fire in the
opposite direction down towards St Mary's (and) Irish Town."
That blaze has consumed more than 11,000 hectares (27,000 square acres)
of land, the TFS said.
In Victoria, an arc of fires burning from the northeast to the Gippsland
in the south has blackened 408,000 hectares, or 4,080 square kilometres,
of land, said Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE)
spokesman Kevin Monk.
That area is twice the size of the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius.
Residents of the northeastern Victoria town of Glencairn were put on
high alert Wednesday as a blaze dubbed the Mount Terrible fire bore down
on it, sending a shower of burning embers into the sky, spreading the
flames.
The town was expected to come under ember attack with 24 hours, while
north to north-westerly winds gusting up to 30 kilometers per hour (20
miles) were forecast by mid-morning.
Soldiers were dispatched to the town of Erica on Tuesday to assist in
building a massive control line in the path of the same blaze.
More than 2,500 fire officers and a battalion of fire engines and
helicopters are fighting the Victoria blazes which are now burning on a
front that is more than 250 kilometres long.
On Tuesday a popular ski lodge in the state was destroyed by the flames.