Cooler weather and some rain helped firefighters battling giant bushfires in Australia's eastern state of Victoria yesterday, but officials warned residents living near the blazes that the danger was not over.
Forecasts of thunderstorms in the state later yesterday also raised the specter of lightning sparking off new fires, officials said.
Cooler temperatures and higher humidity overnight allowed crews to boost containment lines around three large fires, including one that reached within 65km of Melbourne, a spokesman for the Victoria Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) said.
The largest of the blazes in western Victoria's Grampians National Park has killed two people, destroyed more than 125,000 hectares of forest and bushland and killed tens of thousands of sheep over the past week.
A firefighter was also killed when a tanker truck overturned during mopping up operations.
Hundreds of people fled homes in the path of the fires earlier in the week, but firefighters said no houses were under direct threat yesterday and that the fire nearest Melbourne was being brought under control.
Weather forecasters said the cooler weather and some rain were expected to provide relief until at least Tuesday.
Firefighters, however, cautioned people living in the Grampians area and near a second major fire in the state's east needed to remain vigilant.
"It's very important that we remain focussed, that people remain working on their bushfire plans and we just keep foremost in our minds that we are not in the clear by any stretch of the imagination," DSE spokesman Craig Ferguson said on national radio.
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