Australians warned forest fire crisis could last for weeks

Australians still in the path of forest fires 140 kilometres west of Sydney were told Saturday it was to late to be evacuated and thay should take whatever shelter they could find.

 

Lithgow, at the foot of the Blue Mountains in the south-eastern region, had lost nearly 200 homes in the firestorm that swept through Thursday.

 

The blaze is the latest of dozens in an emergency that Rural Fire Service (RFS) commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons warned could last "weeks, not days."

 

Thousands of volunteers have been drafted to battle blazes that have blackened around 100,000 hectares and cost one life.

 

Walter Linder, 63, died of a suspected heart attack as he defended his home from the flames.

 

"I've had no advice of others missing or feared dead," Fitzsimmons said. "Looking at the damage and destruction across these areas, we're expecting numbers to be in the hundreds when it comes to homes and buildings and infrastructure, and we simply can't ignore the reality that there may be people still within their homes that may not have gotten out."

 

A change in the weather saw temperatures and winds subside, giving crews backed by water-bombing aircraft a chance to contain the fire by controlled burns ahead of the front.

 

Fire conditions were described on Thursday as the "worst in a decade" in the south-east, with strong winds, high temperatures and tinder-dry woodland.

 

Phil Koperberg, a former RFS commissioner, was appointed to lead a Blue Mountains recovery team. He said there had been worse fires in the region in the 1950s and '60s, but it was unprecedented at the October start of the southern hemisphere summer.

 

"We've always had fires but not of this nature and not at this time of year and not accompanied by the record-breaking heat we've had," he told The Australian newspaper, characterizing the development as a "feature of a slowly evolving climate."

 

-Sapa