Australia reels after another day of fire fury

Stunned Australians on Sunday counted the cost from a day of catastrophic bushfires that caused “extensive damage” across swathes of the country and took the death toll from the long-running crisis to 24.

Hundreds of properties were destroyed and one man died
trying to save a friend’s home in the severe conditions — among the worst
in Australia’s deadly bushfire crisis.

But even as Australians tried to regroup, seaside towns were
plunged into darkness, ash rained down on rural communities and major cities
were again cloaked in smoke on Sunday.

In the state of New South Wales alone, almost 150 fires
continued to burn, many out of control, with light rains offering little relief
and blazes again touching the suburbs of Sydney.

Everywhere, people struggled to come to grips with a
catastrophe that has taken place on a near-continental scale, unfurled over
months and altered daily life for millions.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” New South Wales
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said. “We can’t pretend that this is
something that we have experienced before. It’s not.”

Authorities have struggled to keep pace with the severity of
the crisis — which has scorched an area almost the size of Ireland.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the
largest military call-up in living memory, mobilising up to 3,000 reservists to
assist exhausted volunteer firefighters.

Warships and combat helicopters have already been repurposed
to help out with the largest maritime evacuation in Australia since
World War II — moving some of the 4,000 people trapped for days on the
foreshore of Mallacoota to safety.

Up the coast, thousands of people remained displaced and
many more are weighing an uncertain future.

Noreen Ralston-Birchaw, 75, lost her home in Mogo on New
Year’s Eve and said she was unsure what to do.

“At this very moment, I don’t want to go back and see
my house laying burnt on the ground,” she told AFP. “I don’t want to
rebuild there.”

Prime Minister Morrison also announced the establishment of
a Bushfire Recovery Agency, that will run for two years and help survivors get
back on their feet, a signal that the path ahead will be long and difficult.

For tens of thousands of volunteer firefighters, the
immediate battle continued, earning them praise from across Australia and
around the world.

Queen Elizabeth II on Sunday said she was “deeply
saddened” by the fires, and thanked the emergency services “who
put their own lives in danger” to help communities.

Celebrities have pledged or raised millions of dollars to
support firefighters and fire-affected communities, including American pop star
Pink, who tweeted on Saturday that she was donating US$500,000.

Australian actress Nicole Kidman matched that pledge.

“Our family’s support, thoughts and prayers are with
everyone affected by the fires all over Australia,” she posted on
Instagram. “We are donating $500,000 to the Rural Fire Services who are
all doing and giving so much right now.”

Easing conditions

Sunday brought milder conditions including cooler air and
some rainfall in New South Wales and neighbouring Victoria state — where
firefighters also battled huge infernos worsened by winds and lightning
strikes.

That will give authorities an opportunity to get fires under
control and take stock of the damage.

But some communities were still under threat from
out-of-control blazes, particularly in and around the town of Eden in New South
Wales near the Victorian border.

“Visibility was down to about 50 metres, if that, and
we had lots of debris falling out of the sky and a lot of white ash,” said
John Steele, 73, who was evacuated with his wife from their rural property
north of Eden late Saturday.

“The sky is still red,” he told AFP. “We’re
not out of the woods yet.” 

In Cooma in inland southern New South Wales, the fire crisis
turned into a flood disaster when a large tower carrying 4.5 million
litres of water swept away cars and filled homes with mud.

“First bushfire and now flood, back-to-back
disasters,” a shaken resident who asked not to be named told AFP.

Australia’s capital Canberra was ranked as the city with the
poorest air quality in the world on Sunday by Air Visual, an independent online
air quality index monitor, amid a severe haze caused by the fires.

Flights were cancelled, galleries were closed to safeguard
public health and a large consignment of facemasks was being brought in.

In some rural areas, police patrolled the streets amid
reports of looting and break-ins in bushfire-affected areas.

While bushfires are common in Australia’s arid summers,
climate change has pushed up land and sea temperatures and led to more
extremely hot days and severe fire seasons.

Article source: https://www.samaa.tv/global/2020/01/australia-reels-after-another-day-of-fire-fury/