Smoke haze settles over Australian capital

Canberra joins Sydney in suffering bush-fire air pollution

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Sydney's golden beaches have turned black after ash from nearby bushfires fell along its coastline.
A firefighter conducting backburning on Saturday to secure residential areas from encroaching bush fires about 100km north of Sydney. Bush fires are common in Australia, but scientists say this year's fire season has come earlier and is more extreme,
A firefighter conducting backburning on Saturday to secure residential areas from encroaching bush fires about 100km north of Sydney. Bush fires are common in Australia, but scientists say this year's fire season has come earlier and is more extreme, owing to a prolonged drought and conditions fuelled by global warming. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

SYDNEY • Smoke haze from bush fires raging in Australia spread to the capital Canberra yesterday, as firefighters raced to contain more than 140 blazes ahead of a heatwave forecast early this week.

Australia is experiencing a horrific start to its fire season, which scientists say began earlier and is more extreme this year, owing to a prolonged drought and the effects of climate change.

Residents of Canberra in the country's south-east woke up to see the capital shrouded in haze yesterday, joining those in Sydney who have endured weeks of toxic air pollution caused by bush-fire smoke.

Officials said favourable weather conditions had given them a chance to bring several blazes under control before the forecast return of strong winds and high temperatures tomorrow.

Among those is a "mega fire" burning across 250,000ha within an hour's drive of Sydney, Australia's largest city, where ash from the fires has occasionally fallen.

Firefighters are now bracing themselves for tomorrow, when temperatures are expected to reach above 40 deg C in parts of New South Wales (NSW) state - worst-hit by the bush fires - and gusting westerly winds are likely to fan the flames.

"(Fire) crews will be doing what they can to consolidate and strengthen containment lines, which in some areas will include backburning," NSW Rural Fire Service spokesman Greg Allan told AFP.

But the state's Bureau of Meteorology warned that the massive fires are "in some cases just too big to put out at the moment".

"They're pumping out vast amounts of smoke which is filling the air, turning the sky orange and even appearing like significant rain on our radars," the department tweeted.

Nearly 50 reinforcements from the United States and Canada have been flown in to support fatigued firefighters in recent days, with the international contingent tasked with providing logistical assistance.

In neighbouring Queensland, the focus was also on managing fatigue among front-line firefighters - who in both states are almost all volunteers - as weather there provided a brief reprieve from weeks of battling blazes.

"We're just looking to wind down and recover and prepare for the next round, whenever that may be," a Queensland Fire and Emergency Services spokesman told AFP.

Since the crisis began in September, six people have been killed, more than 700 homes destroyed and an estimated two million hectares scorched.

Though the human toll has been far lower than the deadliest fire season in 2009 - when almost 200 people died - the scale of this year's devastation has been widely described as unprecedented, as Australians grapple with the impact of a changing climate.

Official data shows this year is on track to be one of the hottest and driest years on record in Australia.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on December 09, 2019, with the headline Smoke haze settles over Australian capital. Subscribe