Rain and cooler temperatures brought some relief to Australia's bushfire-ravaged areas, but firefighters cautioned that quenching the flames is not enough.
The damage from heatwave-spurred bushfires that ripped through two states a day earlier on Sunday started to be assessed by the Australian authorities as a brief break in searing temperatures offered a temporary respite from blazes that scarred the east coast of the country for week.
Despite the welcome change, officials warned that there would be no match for the nearly 200 fires burning in the area with the light rain.
"It's definitely a welcome relief, it's psychological relief if nothing else," said Shane Fitzsimmons, director of the Rural Fire Service, New South Wales (NSW), in an afternoon briefing. "But it's not putting out the flames, unfortunately."
ALL the firefighters we’ve met have told us that rain is what they need and that it could make all the difference. Concern is that they need A LOT of it in many more places! #AustralianBushfire #AustraliaFires #Australia #NSWbushfires
More than £14m has been raised in just 48 hours through a Facebook fundraiser to help the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, organised by Australian comedian Celeste Barber, with close to 670,000 people donating.
On Sunday the world’s number one tennis player Ashleigh Barty pledged to donate all of her Brisbane International prize money to the bushfire appeal – a competition in which the winner takes home more than £190,000 ($360,000 in Australian currency), the Guardian reported.
It emerged on Saturday that American singer Pink had donated half a million US dollars (£382,043) to fire services in Australia, while Nicole Kidman said on Instagram that her family were also donating $500,000.
The financial support comes as tens-thousands of families were forced to flee their homes as the flames approached, with thousands of people also cut off from power supplies.
A large-scale military and police effort continued on Sunday to provide supplies and evacuate thousands of people who have been trapped for days in coastal towns by the fires.
Initial estimates put damaged or destroyed properties in the hundreds, but authorities said the mass evacuations by residents of at-risk areas appear to have prevented major loss of life. Twenty-four people have been killed since the start of this year’s wildfire season.
Fire officials said temperatures were expected to rise again during the week and the next major flashpoint would come by Thursday, but it was too early to gauge the likely severity of the threat.
“The weather activity we’re seeing, the extent and spread of the fires, the speed at which they’re going, the way in which they are attacking communities who have never ever seen fire before is unprecedented,” NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said.
Thousands of people have been evacuated from coastal towns at the peak of the summer holiday season, in one of the biggest coordinated operations since the evacuation of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy flattened the northern city in 1974.
Australia has been battling blazes across much of its east coast for months, with experts saying climate change has been a major factor in a three-year drought that has left much of the country’s bushland tinder-dry and susceptible to fires.
Source:
Huffingtonpost
