Australia-Bush Fires

[NJFFSA16]

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Hundreds of people began sifting
through the charred remains of their homes in Australia's capital
on Sunday, after the worst wildfires in the city's history swept
through suburbs, killing four people and forcing thousands to
evacuate. More than 400 houses were destroyed, officials said.
"I have been to a lot of bush fire scenes in Australia ... but
this is by far the worst," Prime Minister John Howard said Sunday.
Hospitals treated about 250 people for burns and the effects of
smoke from the fires, which swept into Canberra on Saturday.
Many were residents who battled flames with garden hoses and
buckets filled from swimming pools. A number of them reported no
fire crews in their burning neighborhoods.
"We saw a few fire trucks coming down the street. But I think
they must have thought, 'That one's a lost cause' and carried on to
another house," said Phil Bates, a carpenter.
Fire crews admitted they were overwhelmed by the magnitude of
the flames, but John Stanhope, Chief Minister of the Australian
Capital Territory, defended emergency services against charges they
were ill-prepared.
"This was an event of such enormity, of such force and such
devastating power that it simply ran over the top of us," he said.
Police said a 61-year old man died of smoke inhalation while
trying to save his house, and an 83-year-old woman died in her
home. A 37-year-old woman was found dead at her burned-out home
along with an unidentified body.
Fires were under control early Monday but officials said one
blaze near the suburb of Belconnen posed a threat if winds pick up
later in the day.
Firefighters bulldozed massive fire breaks on the outskirts of
the city after weather forecasters said temperatures would reach 95
and winds would be strong.
Scorched pine plantations formed a landscape of blackened and
skeletal trees. A mist of fine ash blew through the streets and
thick smoke hung over the city of about 320,000 people, surrounded
by drought-hit farmland and tinder-dry forests.
Electricity, lost to large parts of Canberra at the height of
the emergency, had been restored by Monday to most of the city.
However, water supplies were limited. Residents were asked not to
shower or wash clothes.
Conditions were forecast to worsen Monday and Tuesday with
temperatures and wind speeds picking up. No rain was forecast for
the week.
Extra police patrolled the city after reports of looting and
suspicions of arson, said Canberra police chief John Murray. One
man was arrested and charged with stealing.
Most of the fires were sparked a week ago by lightning in a
nearby national park. Strong, dry Outback winds and soaring
temperatures in Canberra's outer suburbs triggered Saturday's
havoc.
Howard interrupted his summer vacation to tour the fire-scorched
suburbs, where residents described the speed of the fires.
"We just got a few precious things out and the family dog and
within two minutes the house was just gone," Tony Walter told
Howard. "It just exploded."
Damages were expected to run into hundreds of millions of
dollars. Besides homes, the fires consumed medical centers, schools
and thousands of acres of pine forests, said chief minister
Stanhope.
Many firefighters lost their homes and possessions while
fighting blazes elsewhere, he said. The Stromlo Observatory, a
historic telescope and science center on a hill outside the city,
was also destroyed.
People who lost their homes will be given $5,800 to buy
emergency supplies and clothing, and the city will seek alternative
housing.
The mood among many residents turned to anger by Monday as some
reported that no fire crews came to their burning streets on
Saturday, and emergency services admitted they were overwhelmed by
the ferocity and magnitude of the flames.
Stanhope sought to ease tensions by announcing a full inquiry.
More than 1,000 people were still in evacuation centers Sunday
and people were warned not to return to their homes because of the
danger of more fires and explosions caused by gas leaks.
The city also faced a looming environmental crisis: Its main
sewage plant was damaged in the fire and was expected to overflow
into a local river in about a day if it was not fixed.
Australia is in the grip of a yearlong drought that has left
much of the countryside parched and vulnerable to fire. Once fires
start, they roar through dry undergrowth and into oil-filled
eucalyptus trees, creating infernos that are all but impossible to
put out.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[NJFFSA16]

CANBERRA, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Thousands of people in the
Australian capital, Canberra, worked feverishly on Tuesday to
protect their homes as devastating bushfires threatened to blow
back into the city.
Weary residents in the smoke-filled capital climbed on to
roofs with garden hoses shortly after dawn and cut shrubs and
trees from around their homes, hoping to avert the firestorm
which killed four and destroyed 419 homes on Saturday.
"We've had the bath filled since yesterday, we've got hoses
in the gutters, towels in the downpipes and the car is packed,"
Melissa Campaign, 26, told Reuters.
Officials placed 13 suburbs in Canberra's northwest on
alert, warning that weather forecasts for shifting winds and
temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) could drive
a bushfire, currently about 10 kms (6 miles) from the city,
towards the capital.
"The Emergency Services Bureau has advised today's weather
conditions could result in fires in the northwest of (the
capital), crossing containment lines and threatening
residential areas in suburbs around Belconnen," a spokeswoman
for the Australian Federal Police told Reuters.
"Residents should remain calm at this point but are advised
to take precautionary measures to protect their homes."
Firefighters and military engineers worked overnight with
bulldozers to carve and grade a 23-km (14-mile) firebreak along
the western edge of the "bush capital," home to 300,000,
including hundreds of foreign diplomats.
"MATTER OF WAITING"
Tension in the charred city has been heightened since
Saturday's firestorm.
Evacuation centres, which took in 2,500 people over the
weekend from the southwest suburbs, prepared for a fresh influx
as local radio urged those unable to fight the fires to
evacuate early.
Campaign and two friends carried brush to a waiting trailer
while partner Patrick Ceeney was up a ladder cutting trees back
from their house.
"Now, it's just a matter of waiting," Campaign said, as
fire trucks passed by.
But few people were panicking. Just a block away, a
foursome teed off at the smokey neighbourhood golf course.
Police went door-to-door to warn residents of the looming
danger after emergency services had been accused of not doing
enough to warn residents about the weekend fires.
Canberra Hospital spokesman Trevor Sharkie said the
emergency department was ready for new admissions, though
Sharkie himself was bailing out to defend his house.
"I'm about to go home because my suburb is not looking the
best at the moment," he told Reuters.
More than 300 people were injured in the weekend blazes.
Three had serious burns and were evacuated by air to Sydney,
about 300 kms (185 miles) north.
REUTERS

[NJFFSA16]

CANBERRA, Jan 23 (Reuters) - As firefighters work around
the clock to save Australian homes, police on Thursday were
dealing with the ugliest side of the annual bush fires --
arsonists.
In Canberra, where ferocious bush fires claimed four lives
and over 530 homes last weekend, police have charged two men,
aged 15 and 20, with deliberately lighting fires while a
16-year-old has been charged with looting an evacuated home.
Talk-back radio was bristling with anger over the firebugs
and callous opportunists, such as the thief who stole a car
packed with a family's treasures as they battled to save their
house. "There is the potential that others out there might try
to do the same so we are asking people to report anything
suspicious," an Australian Federal Police spokeswoman told
Reuters.
While the threat to the capital Canberra has eased, fire
crews in the southeast state of Victoria battled several
blazes, with weekend forecasts for high winds and 40 degrees
Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) temperatures expected to fan the
flames.
Overnight one fire came within two km (1.3 miles) of the
historic gold mining town of Beechworth, 270 km (168 miles)
northeast of Melbourne, forcing 60 people to flee their homes.
"We are working to get these fires into a safe position
before the weekend. The risk across the whole state is
extreme," Country Fire Authority spokesman Peter Philps told
Reuters.
Victorian police were investigating the cause of several
blazes lit on Tuesday, with four homes razed in the state.
"Any arsonist who is found lighting fires will have the
full force of the law employed," Premier Steve Bracks told
reporters.
Police in the island state of Tasmania were also
investigating the possibility that arson started fires which
have so far destroyed five homes, while Western Australian
police have charged a 14-year-old youth with starting a bush
fire.
Penalties for arson vary in Australia's six states and two
territories but can carry jail terms of up to 15 years.
The hand of arsonists is nothing new in the bush fires that
erupt across this massive island continent every summer as part
of a natural cycle in the Australian bush. The danger emerges
when fires encroach on residential areas.
Last year, 22 people -- mainly male teenagers -- were
arrested for deliberately lighting fires in and around Sydney,
the country's largest city, which destroyed about 109 homes.
Psychologist Dr Kerry Hempenstall, from the Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology, said there was a worrying escalation
in the incidence of arson sparking bush fires due to copy-cats.
"The more we hear about it, the more dissatisfied, bored,
excitement-seeking adolescents on holiday from school get into
the business," Hempenstall told Reuters.
"They tend to be vandals, a risk-taking group, but there is
also a proportion who are seeking vengeance on the world...and
a small number of pyromaniacs who set fires to relieve
tension."

Reut00:04 01-23-03

[NJFFSA16]

SYDNEY, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Cooler weather gave Australian
firefighters a respite on Monday after weekend bushfires razed
over a dozen homes, but authorities said they expected searing
heat and high winds to return by mid-week.
A 32-year-old volunteer fireman died in far western
Australia on Sunday and five were injured after three emergency
vehicles collided during efforts to protect the small town of
Lancelin, 120 km (72 miles) north of Perth, local media
reported.
Four people were killed and 530 homes destroyed by fire the
week before in capital Canberra, where thousands of residents
spent Sunday armed with hosepipes instead of celebrating
Australia Day that marks the proclamation of British
sovereignty over Australia's eastern seaboard on January 26,
1788.
In Australia's most populous state, New South Wales,
authorities allowed residents of the Snowy Mountains ski resort
of Thredbo to return to their homes on Monday after hundreds
had been evacuated on Saturday.
Elsewhere on the vast continent, where one of the worst
droughts in 100 years has turned the normally fireprone bush
into a tinderbox, officials said firefighters were working to
contain firefronts before searing heat and high winds returned.
"The fires are unpredictable at the moment because of the
weather situation but they are not burning as quickly as they
were yesterday," said Lyndel Hunter of the Country Fire
Authority in the southern state of Victoria.
"We have a little bit of a respite," she told Reuters.
Bushfires continued to burn around Canberra, and dozens
more smouldered in surrounding New South Wales, but officials
said no homes were immediately under threat.
"Although the immediate risk of fires impacting on the
Canberra metropolitan area from the fires to the northwest and
south of the city has subsided for the moment, temperatures
will again rise to the mid 30s (degrees Celsius) on Wednesday
and Thursday," the Emergency Services Bureau said on Monday.
The fury of the firestorms that roared through suburban
Canberra earlier this month was fed by parched conditions after
10 months of El Nino-aggravated drought, which has left
eucalypt forests and pine plantations bone dry.
Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday, a
public holiday, that an unprecedented 6,233 bush and grass
fires were recorded across New South Wales in the past six
months. Of those, 747 were considered significant.
REUTERS

[NJFFSA16]

SYDNEY, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Soaring temperatures and high
winds fuelled bushfires raging across Australia on Sunday,
razing four homes in rural Victoria and forcing the evacuation
of villages in the Snowy Mountains near the capital, Canberra.
But with over 4,000 firefighters working to control the
blazes, officials were not expecting a repeat of last weekend,
when fires killed four people and destroyed 530 Canberra homes.
"However it's not over yet. We've still a few hours of
difficult weather today and the forecast is bad for later this
week," Rural Fire Brigade spokesman John Winter told Reuters.
Bushfires regularly tear across Australia's parched
landscape, but one of the worst droughts in a century has
brought extreme conditions, turning bushland into a tinderbox.
Canberra residents appeared to have escaped the worst of
the blazes on Sunday but fire crews in the state of Victoria
were struggling to contain three massive bushfires blazing
across the state, fanned by high winds.
Country Fire Authority spokesman John Worthy said fire
destroyed four houses in the village of Cobungra, near the town
of Omeo, 250 km (155 miles) northeast of Melbourne.
"We believe some other houses could have been lost north of
Omeo and we've asked people to put their emergency fire plans
into action," he told Reuters.
Bushfires were also starting to run out of control in the
Snowy Mountains, southwest of Canberra, where one of
Australia's main mountain resorts, Thredbo, was largely
evacuated last week.
VILLAGES EVACUATED
Emergency crews ordered the evacuation of several hundred
people still in the Thredbo valley and nearby villages.
"We do have to be aware that the circumstances are extreme
but this is a well-thought-through response to the
circumstances that were predicted," Brian Gilligan, director
general of the New South Wales (NSW) National Parks and
Wildlife Service, told reporters.
With much of southeastern Australia on fire alert,
celebrations for the country's national day took a backseat
with a total fire ban in several states scuppering fireworks
displays and traditional backyard barbecues.
Thousands of Canberra residents cancelled their usual
Australia Day festivities to stay at home and ready garden
hoses as temperatures soared to 40 degrees Celsius (104
degrees).
"No-one is celebrating this year because these fires have
really put a damper on things," Anne Mills, a Canberra
resident, told Reuters, as she waited anxiously, watching the
winds.
Volunteers have backburned areas to create fire breaks to
stop fires advancing through pine forests in the south of New
South Wales state and onto the outskirts of Canberra.
Territory Fire Chief Peter Lucas-Smith told reporters there
was no shortage of volunteers on Australia Day, which marks 215
years since Britain founded a convict settlement in Sydney.
"There is no way they want a simple thing like the weather
to beat them on a day like today," he said.
Although much of Sydney was enveloped in a thick haze,
families set up picnics in inner-city parks, the colourful
annual Sydney ferry race took place as usual in a harbour
packed with pleasure craft, and thousands flocked to the beach.
At Sydney's Manly beach, dozens of surfers crowded
offshore, waiting for the perfect wave, and swimmers had to
thread through a sea of Australian flags planted in the sand to
reach the water.
(With additional reporting by Belinda Goldsmith in Canberra)
(US$1-A$1.69)

[NJFFSA16]

Australian towns tired of bushfire waiting game
By Michelle Nichols
MELBOURNE, Jan 28 (Reuters) - The water tastes of soot,
clothes reek of charcoal and thick smoke chokes the countryside
and blanks the sun.
After three weeks bracing for massive bushfires with
hosepipes and buckets, Australians living in the charred Alps
of southern Victoria state are growing impatient for the fight.
"I feel like saying to the fire 'come on down baby, we're
going to get you'," said Annette Hill, owner of a general store
in Mitta Mitta, a rural hamlet of 150 people 380 km (237 miles)
northeast of Melbourne.
"Bloody Mother Nature must be going through a mid-life
crisis," Hill told Reuters on Tuesday.
Mitta Mitta was virtually ringed by smouldering bush on
Tuesday as firefighters took advantage of milder conditions to
prepare for the next round in the battle against bushfires that
have already razed more than a dozen homes in the area.
Searing heat and stiff winds were expected to return on
Wednesday and Thursday, potentially fanning once again a 120-km
(75-mile) firefront that has burned through 400,000 hectares
(960,000 acres) -- more than twice the size of Greater London.
"We are all getting very tired. I think if the fires don't
kill us the bloody stress will," Hill said.
With Australia suffering one of its worst droughts in a
century, forests and bushland have turned into a giant
tinderbox, harvests are being slashed and water is rationed
everywhere.
Four people were killed and 530 homes destroyed when
bushfires tore through the capital Canberra just over a week
ago.
Now a main battleground is the Victorian highlands.
CLOSE CALL
The historic goldmining town of Omeo, around 400 km (249
miles) northeast of Melbourne and home to 1,800 people, was
showered with burning embers on Sunday but is still waiting for
the arrival of the main firefront, two to three kms (miles)
away.
The town has evacuated its hospital and most elderly
people, and families with young children have fled their homes.
"Everyone just wants it to be over. We are sort of a town
in limbo -- we have no old people here, we have no children
here, we have got no tourists," Ann Petersen, owner of the Omeo
Newsagency, told Reuters.
"The fire just grew in intensity as it moved closer on
Sunday and it was roaring like a big locomotive. It was a
frightening experience but everybody stood their ground. We got
through that and hopefully we can get through whatever it
throws at us next."
Some of Omeo's residents know from personal experience what
the bushfires can do -- the town was virtually destroyed in
1939 when the "Black Friday" bushfires burned through more than
1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) across Victoria.
Bushfires continued to burn on Tuesday all over the parched
country.
On Tuesday, an 18-year-old volunteer fireman appeared in
court, charged with setting a number of fires in bushland north
of Melbourne, while last week Canberra police charged two other
people, aged 15 and 20, with deliberately lighting fires.

Reut02:15 01-28-03

[NJFFSA16]

Parched Australian koalas roam town for water
SYDNEY, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Koalas, parched after 11 months
of drought, are abandoning their babies and heading into
Australian residential areas in search of water, a wildlife
rescue worker said on Thursday.
Nancy Small, who runs a koala rehabilitation centre in the
rural New South Wales township of Gunnedah, said dehydrated
koalas were leaving their eucalyptus trees and heading for
backyards to lap water from dripping taps and sprinklers.
"Because we haven't had any rain for such a long time, and
because of the heat, the koalas don't get enough moisture out
of the leaves in the trees, and of course there's no other
water around. They're really suffering at the moment," Small
said.
"A lot of them are turning up in backyards and...going into
the town area. The ones out in the forest, put it this way,
only the strongest will survive," Small told Reuters.
Australia, already one of the world's driest continents,
has been experiencing one of the most severe droughts of the
past century. The "Big Dry" has fuelled massive bushfires and
decimated harvests, cutting economic growth.
Small, who runs the rescue centre at the Waterways Wildlife
Park in Gunnedah, a town 350 km (218 miles) northwest of Sydney
that boasts a large koala population, said mother koalas were
abandoning babies to hunt for water.
Local residents were keeping many koalas alive by putting
water out for them. A few had been handed in to the
rehabilitation centre, joining others that have been hit by
cars or attacked by dogs.
"Some are ready to be released, I'm just waiting for rain,"
said Small.

Reut21:10 01-29-03

[NJFFSA16]

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - More than 300 firefighters battled
Wednesday to stop a 1,800-hectare (4,450-acre) blaze from spreading
across bushland in southern Australian, emergency services said.
Crews used seven water-carrying helicopters and 30 trucks in an
effort to stop the fire that broke out Monday, razing much of
Goonoo State Forest, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) northeast of
the town of Dubbo in New South Wales, said Cameron Wade of the New
South Wales Rural Fire Service.
The fire was not immediately threatening any private property,
Wade said, although it was only seven kilometers (four miles) from
the small town of Ballimore, where residents were on high alert.
"The wind is actually blowing the fire away from them at this
point in time, but it is the community closest to the fire," Wade
said.
Firefighters "will continue back-burning and strengthening
containment lines to make them as wide as possible," he said.
Temperatures of up to 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) were
predicted for central New South Wales on Wednesday, with winds of
up to 70 kilometers (45 miles) per hour.
Last year's fire season was one of the worst on record in
Australia. In the most devastating blaze, four people were killed
and 500 homes razed when a massive firestorm swept into the
national capital, Canberra, last January.
The fire season, during the Southern Hemisphere summer, begins
around November and peaks in January.
Most fires start from natural causes like lightning, although
arsonists are sometimes responsible.

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[NJFFSA16]

CANBERRA Australia (AP) - A year after a wildfire swept with
devastating power into Australia's capital, the worst-hit
neighborhoods still bear the scars - blackened earth, scorched
trees, vacant building lots.
On Sunday, hundreds of people plan to gather at a lakeside park
in Canberra to remember the loss, tragedy, heroism and community
spirit generated when walls of flame ravaged the city, incinerating
507 homes and killing four people.
The inferno, which swept out of grass and pine plantations on
the edge of Canberra on Jan. 18 last year, was like no other
experienced in recent memory.
After a yearlong drought, winds of up to 90 mph, combined with
temperatures of more than 104 degrees and record low humidity to
stoked a blaze that overwhelmed firefighters.
John Flannery watched in horror as a swirling ball of flames
barreled toward his house with a roar like a jet engine, spitting
out chunks of blazing trees.
"It was like a horror movie with this thing outside our house,
fingers of flame were darting under the doors, curtains were
beginning to burn," said Flannery who lost his house and
everything in it. "The house was starting to burn, the roof was
caving in when we left, I honestly just don't know how we got out
with our lives."
But for Flannery and hundreds of other Canberra families who
have been unable to rebuild their homes the tragedy is not a grim
memory, but a bitter and lingering reality.
The inferno's aftermath is felt in soaring house prices and
building costs that have made it impossible for many to rebuild.
According to the city government's Planning and Land Authority
just 47 of the 507 homes destroyed have been rebuilt. Another 147
have been approved for construction.
The authority's chief planner, Neil Savery, said although a few
people had decided to sell their land and move, most have chosen to
start over on the same block.
But hundreds of people are discovering their insurance coverage
has not kept pace with the impact of the fire on the real estate
and building markets.
"The crux of the problem is affordability, the sums just don't
add up," said Flannery who, with his wife Liz Tilley and three
children has been living in a rented house with donated furniture
for the past year.
They paid $256,000 for their home before it was destroyed. It
was insured for $240,000.
Last week they got a quote to rebuild a slightly more modest
home for $400,000.
"We were gobsmacked. We had to pick ourselves up off the
floor," said Flannery. "We still have a very sizable mortgage and
that price will just go straight on top of that."
The problem for fire victims is that the inferno came in the
midst of an overheated real estate market. To make matters worse,
the loss of 500 homes in a city of 320,000 people swamped local
builders, sending construction and building material costs higher.
"Insurance pays you out for what you lost but that was in an
old market. You have to rebuild in a new market and a competitive
real estate market," said Flannery.
Builder Steve Douglas, who is rebuilding his own home said the
price of building a house has jumped 50 percent since the fire.
"The fact is people just can't afford it," Douglas said.
Despite the heartaches and financial burdens, Tilley said the
disaster generated a community spirit and generosity that surprised
her.
"We have had so much help from so many people, friends,
strangers, businesses, the community in general," said Tilley. "I
guess the lesson is if you are going to have a disaster have it
with 500 other people."

APTV 01-17-04 0516EST