Wildfires intensified near Sydney over the weekend, threatening houses on the fringe of Australia’s largest city and devastating a small town about 50 miles away.
Officials warn that wide swaths of the country are still at risk in one of the country’s worst fire seasons in years.
Australia typically has wildfires in its summer months, but this year’s fire season began early—a combination of extreme heat and a severe drought, scientists say. As with California, the trend is moving toward bigger, faster-moving and more destructive wildfires, due in part to climate change.
“The things that produce high fire danger—that is high temperatures, the drought factor and so on—are literally becoming more frequent with climate change,” said Nigel Tapper, a climate scientist and professor at Monash University in Melbourne. “There’s virtually nowhere that isn’t dry at the moment.”
Fire officials don’t expect significant rain until late January at the earliest, and they warned about 77,000 square miles—an area the size of Nebraska—was at risk of burning in New South Wales state alone. Already, more than 11,500 square miles have burned in the state, an area larger than Massachusetts.
As of Sunday morning, more than 105 fires were burning in New South Wales, the country’s most populous state and home to Sydney, and 59 of those were considered out of control.
The state’s premier, Gladys Berejiklian, said there is “not much left” in the town of Balmoral, which had a population of about 400 people and is nestled in the highlands southwest of Sydney. Officials estimated Sunday that 100 buildings across the state burned down over the previous 24 hours, and were working to assess the extent of the damage in Balmoral.
“The team inside there said it was devastating,” Shane Fitzsimmons, commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, told reporters.
Two firefighters were killed and three were injured in the area when their truck rolled over after hitting a tree, fire authorities said Friday. No civilian deaths in New South Wales were reported over the weekend.
Through mid-December, 724 homes had been destroyed in New South Wales this fire season, officials have said.
Smoke from the fires has been settling over Sydney for weeks, making it difficult to breathe, prompting health officials to warn people with respiratory conditions to stay inside.
At times, the smoke was so thick it obscured views of the city’s iconic harbor, a tourist hot spot known for the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. Research firm SGS Economics and Planning has estimated that the smoke is costing Sydney’s economy up to $35 million a day.
There’s also been political fallout—Australia’s conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison cut short a holiday to Hawaii over the weekend after being criticized for taking vacation during the wildfire crisis.
In Buxton, a town near Balmoral, Geoff Brown planned to stay home to protect his property from embers that might blow in from afar. But a few days ago, as the 60-year-old watched the smoke near, he decided he wasn’t prepared to ride out the blaze. It was only the second time he had fled a fire in more than 20 years, he said.
As he drove out of town, Mr. Brown noticed fires on the side of the road. Soon, the smoke was so thick that he could barely make out the lane markings.
“I was basically in a wall of fire,” he said. “It was terrifying.”
Mr. Brown, who was able to return home with his family Sunday night, said the property was littered with burned debris but had otherwise escaped undamaged.
Further south, in the coastal area of Callala Bay, Wayne Smith said a wildfire prompted authorities to close the roads into town shortly after he returned home from the beach on Saturday. He didn’t see any flames during the drive, but said there was a lot of smoke and ash raining down.
“The smoke came in and it started getting really dark,” Mr. Smith, 50, said Sunday. “By 5 yesterday, it looked like it was 9 o’clock at night.”
—James Glynn contributed to this article.
Write to Mike Cherney at mike.cherney@wsj.com
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2019-12-22 12:15:00Z
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