Residents of at least three small Australian towns braced for disaster on Wednesday 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 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 back-burning exercise to clear brush near the towns of St Mary’s and Irish Town, population 600, which lie south-west 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 000ha of land, the TFS said.
In Victoria, an arc of fires burning from the north-east to the Gippsland in the south has blackened 408 000ha of land, said Department of Sustainability and Environment spokesperson Kevin Monk. That area is twice the size of the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius.
Residents of the north-eastern Victoria town of Glencairn were put on high alert on 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 30kph 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 250km long.
On Tuesday a popular ski lodge in the state was destroyed by the flames. — Sapa-AFP