Australian state declares emergency due to wildfires

Fires in New South Wales’ northeast have claimed three lives, destroyed more than 150 homes and razed more than 850,000 hectares of forest and farmland since Friday. (AAP via Reuters)

• Residents facing what ‘could be the most dangerous bushfire week this nation has ever seen’
• Fire conditions are forecast to be worse on Tuesday than they were at the peak of the current fire emergency on Friday

CANBERRA, Australia: Australia’s most populous state declared a state of emergency on Monday due to unprecedented wildfire danger as calls grew for Australia to take more action to counter climate change.
New South Wales state Emergency Services Minister David Elliott said residents were facing what “could be the most dangerous bushfire week this nation has ever seen.”
Fires in the state’s northeast have claimed three lives, destroyed more than 150 homes and razed more than 850,000 hectares (3,300 square miles) of forest and farmland since Friday.
Fire conditions are forecast to be worse on Tuesday than they were at the peak of the current fire emergency on Friday.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the last time a state of emergency was declared in New South Wales was 2013 when there were extensive fires in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.
“The catastrophic weather conditions mean that things can change very quickly,” she told reporters in Sydney.
Catastrophic fire danger has been declared for Sydney and the Hunter Valley region to the north on Tuesday with severe and extreme danger across vast tracts of the rest of the state.
The week-long declaration of a state of emergency gives the Rural Fire Service sweeping powers.
The annual Australian fire season, which peaks during the Southern Hemisphere summer, has started early after an unusually warm and dry winter. The crisis has reignited debate on whether Australia has taken enough action on climate change.
Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquid natural gas. It is also the world’s driest continent after Antarctic, which scientist say leaves Australians particularly vulnerable to weather extremes associated with a changing climate.
Carol Sparks, a local mayor who lost her home in a fire near the New South Wales town of Glen Innes, said climate change had contributed to the emergency.
Some residents in the path of dangerous fires blame the intensity of flames on environmentally focused lawmakers who have prevented regular controlled burning of forests to reduce the fuel load in the tinder-dry landscape for fear of smoke and harm to wildlife.
The leader of the minor Australian Greens party, Richard Di Natale, and the party’s climate spokesman, Adam Bandt, blamed Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government for the crisis.
“Scott Morrison has not got the climate crisis under control,” Bandt said.
Morrison said Saturday that he had not considered whether the unprecedented fires scorching New South Wales and neighboring Queensland state were linked to climate change.
“My only thoughts today are with those who have lost their lives and their families. The firefighters who are fighting the fires, the response effort that has to be delivered and how the Commonwealth has to respond in supporting those efforts,” Morrison told reporters.