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Sydney faces fire threat again
SYDNEY, JAN. 2. Sydney braced itself for a grim day of heat and strong winds today, a day after the bushfire crisis encroached on the suburbs of Australia's biggest city for the first time.
Thousands of firefighters have battled around 100 fires across New South Wales (NSW) state since Christmas Day, but were stretched further yesterday when a new blaze erupted in Sydney's leafy northern suburbs, threatening hundreds of homes.
The NSW rural fire service commissioner, Mr. Phil Koperberg, said his crews, bolstered by firefighters from around Australia, were expecting more tough conditions around the state.
Strong winds up to 60 km an hour and summer temperatures of up to 35 degrees C have been forecast.
``Today it's about as bad a picture as you can conjure up,'' Mr. Koperberg told reporters.
``We have somewhere in the order of 2,000 km of fire perimeter to deal with on a day which is not conducive to doing anything else but hopping in the swimming pool somewhere...The firefighters are feeling the strain.'' Since Christmas, the NSW fires have destroyed at least 150 homes, devastated national parks and farms and killed thousands of sheep.
The fires have already burned out some 300,000 hectares of bush, twice the size of greater London.
With Sydney ringed by fires to its north, west and south, holidaymakers have found its famous beaches littered with ash and the city is blanketed daily by a pall of smoke.
The `black Christmas' fires, as they have become known, many thought to have been lit by arsonists, are the most intense the country has seen since 1994 when four people were killed.
There have been no reports of deaths or serious injury as a direct result of the fires but dozens of firefighters have been treated for smoke inhalation and one suffered nasal burns.
With no houses destroyed over the past 48 hours, the NSW Premier, Mr. Bob Carr, praised the efforts of the 10,000 firefighters.
``We've never faced a challenge like this, this wretched combination of high temperatures and very high winds and yet, with this spate of new fires and the firestorms across the state, apparently no houses (have been) lost,'' he told local radio.
Relatively mild conditions overnight enabled firefighters to work on containment lines and set backburning operations to starve many of the biggest fires of fuel.
The fire in Parklands around the Sydney residential area of Pennant hills, which is still burning, threatened 200 homes and forced dozens of families to evacuate.
The fire spread quickly, fanned by northwesterly winds gusting at up to 80 km per hour.
Firefighters pumped water from backyard swimming pools and helicopters scooped water from lakes at nearby golf courses to help put out the flames.
Homes were also evacuated yesterday in Kurrajong in the Blue Mountains 60 km west of Sydney.
- Reuters
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