Thousands of holidaymakers and locals were bedding down at beaches in fire-ravaged southeast Australia on New Year’s Eve after fleeing deadly blazes that ripped through popular tourist areas and cut off several towns.
In seaside communities along a 200km strip of coast, terrified crowds — wrapped in blankets and wearing makeshift facemasks — sought refuge from the inferno near the water.
Some with boats earlier took to the sea in near-darkness, hoping to find safety, as one of the worst days yet in Australia’s months-long bushfire crisis prompted a military deployment to help relief efforts.
Photo: AFP
Three people died, five more are unaccounted for, and scores of properties were feared destroyed after a brutal 24 hours in which flames reached well-populated towns like Batemans Bay, normally bursting with visitors during Australia’s summer holidays.
“We’ve got literally hundreds, thousands of people up and down the coast taking refuge on the beaches” and in surf clubs, New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said.
“In the majority of these cases, we’re being told that people will be sleeping over at these clubs,” Surf Life Saving Australia chief executive officer Steven Pearce told ABC. “We’ll have instances of 500 people or more trying to sleep in and around our surf clubs.”
Photo: AFP
About 4,000 people were trapped on the foreshore in the town of Mallacoota, where towering columns of smoke turned the sky pitch black and nearby fires caused waves of “ember attacks.”
Later, authorities said that Mallacoota and a nearby town remained cut off, but the life-threatening fire front had finally passed.
“I understand there was a public cheer down at the jetty when that was announced,” Country Fire Authority Chief Cfficer Steve Warrington said.
In some places the blazes were so intense, the smoke so thick and the dry lightning storms precipitated by the fires so severe that aerial reconnaissance and water bombing had to be halted.
The situation was scarcely better in inland rural communities, where countless more people were displaced and forced into makeshift camps.
Helicopters, aircraft and naval ships would be sent to the region, Australian Minister for Defence Linda Reynolds said.
More backup has been requested from firefighters in Canada and the US.
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