The Australian navy on Friday began the evacuations of some of the thousands of people stranded on the east coast of the fire-ravaged country as a searing weather front was set to whip up more blazes across the states of Victoria and New South Wales.
At the peak of the summer holiday period, tens of thousands of vacationers were urged to leave national parks and tourist areas on the NSW south coast and eastern areas of Victoria before a return of temperatures above 40 degrees and strong winds on Saturday.
Traffic out of Bateman’s Bay, a popular holiday spot on the NSW south coast, was less busy than on Wednesday and Thursday, with many people having heeded the directives to leave the area before the weekend.
Victoria declared a state of disaster for the first time, giving authorities broad powers to compel people to leave their properties and take control of services, similar to the state of emergency that has been declared in NSW.
AUSTRALIA FIRES
Data as of Thursday, Jan. 2, 9:00 a.m. ET
Hotspots for the past 24 hours
Evacuation zones
Banda Sea
Coral Sea
NT
AUSTRALIA
WA
QLD
SA
NSW
Sydney
Great Australian
Bight
VIC
Melbourne
0
450
KM
TAS
Evacuation zones:
State government of New South Wales has declared a state of emergency and has urged a mass exodus from several towns on the southeast coast
Nowra
Canberra
Batlow
Batemans Bay
Cabramurra
Moruya
Badja
Greg Greg
Narooma
Belowra
Kosciuszko
National Park
Cobargo
Bega
Merimbula
Eden
Wonboyn
Mallacoota
Cann River
0
30
Bemm River
KM
MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:
TILEZEN; OSM CONTRIBUTORS; NEW SOUTH WALES
GOVERNMENT; NASA
AUSTRALIA FIRES
Data as of Thursday, Jan. 2, 9:00 a.m. ET
Hotspots for the past 24 hours
Evacuation zones
PAPUA NEW
GUINEA
Banda Sea
Coral Sea
NT
AUSTRALIA
WA
QLD
SA
NSW
Sydney
Great Australian
Bight
VIC
Melbourne
0
450
TAS
KM
Evacuation zones:
State government of New South Wales has declared a state of emergency and has urged a mass exodus from several towns on the southeast coast
Nowra
Canberra
Batlow
Batemans Bay
Cabramurra
Moruya
Badja
Greg Greg
Narooma
Belowra
Kosciuszko
National Park
Cobargo
Bega
Merimbula
Eden
Wonboyn
Mallacoota
Cann River
0
30
KM
Bemm River
MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TILEZEN;
OSM CONTRIBUTORS; NEW SOUTH WALES GOVERNMENT; NASA
AUSTRALIA FIRES
Data as of Thursday, Jan. 2, 9:00 a.m. ET
Hotspots for the past 24 hours
Evacuation zones
PAPUA NEW
GUINEA
Banda Sea
Solomon Sea
NORTHERN
TERRITORY
Coral Sea
QUEENSLAND
AUSTRALIA
WESTERN
AUSTRALIA
SOUTH
AUSTRALIA
NEW SOUTH
WALES
Great Australian
Bight
Sydney
VICTORIA
Melbourne
0
450
TASMANIA
KM
Nowra
Evacuation zones:
State government of New South Wales has declared a state of emergency and has urged a mass exodus from several towns on the southeast coast
Canberra
Batlow
Batemans Bay
Moruya
Cabramurra
Badja
Greg Greg
Belowra
Narooma
Kosciuszko
National Park
Cobargo
Bega
Merimbula
Eden
Wonboyn
Mallacoota
Cann River
0
30
KM
Bemm River
MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TILEZEN; OSM CONTRIBUTORS;
NEW SOUTH WALES GOVERNMENT; NASA
Dozens of Canadian fire-fighting experts on ground in Australia
Andrew Crisp, emergency management commissioner for Victoria, urged people in at-risk areas to leave their homes immediately and not count on luck to avoid disaster.
“This is your opportunity to get out. It is not just the fires we know. It is the new fires that might start today,” he told ABC News.
Another death from the fires in NSW was confirmed Friday, taking the toll in the state this week to eight. Two people have died in Victoria’s fires, and 28 others are unaccounted for.
The navy’s HMAS Choules and Sycamore started the evacuations of nearly 1,000 of the 4,000 people stranded on a beach in the isolated town of Mallacoota in far-east Victoria, federal MP Darren Chester tweeted Friday morning.
With all roads blocked, sea transport and some airlifts are the only way out of the stricken town, and each round trip by sea could take a day or more.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison had called for calm on Thursday before visiting the fire-devastated NSW town of Cobargo, where he was not entirely welcome.
Video showed Mr. Morrison confronted by a group of angry locals, one of whom shouted he should be “ashamed of himself” and said he had “left the country to burn.”
NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance, whose represents the local area and is from the same party as the Prime Minister, said he had not heard from Mr. Morrison and did not know he was visiting the area.
“To be honest the locals probably gave him the welcome he probably deserved,” Mr. Constance told Channel 7.
Mr. Morrison’s conservative government has long drawn criticism for not doing enough to address climate change as a cause of Australia’s savage drought and fires. Anthony Albanese, head of the Opposition Labor Party, called for a national response to a national emergency.
“We haven’t, in my lifetime, had people on beaches waiting to be evacuated in life jackets … like it’s a peacetime version of something that we have seen during wartime. This is not business as usual,” he said in a media conference.
Bushfires so far this season have scorched more than four million hectares of bushland and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, including 381 destroyed on the south coast just this week.
The NSW Rural Fire Service says there are 127 fires burning in the state and warned of a fire front stretching 60 to 70 kilometres on Saturday. Past Saturday, there were no other peak days of fire danger forecast for a while.
A contingent of 39 firefighters from North America landed in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, this week, bringing to almost 100 the number of U.S. and Canadian experts who have flown in to help deal with the crisis.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed sympathy for those who have suffered in Australia, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said Thursday, adding that Mr. Guterres has warned that when it comes to tackling global warming, “right now the pace we’re on, we’re not winning that race.”
With reports from Associated Press