A water-bombing aircraft tackling newly flaring wildfires in Australia crashed yesterday, killing the pilot, as the military apologized for starting a huge blaze that has left residents living in fear.
Thousands of largely volunteer firefighters have been battling infernos for eight days across the state of New South Wales (NSW) that have destroyed more than 200 homes, with the Blue Mountains region west of Sydney the focal point. Cooler weather initially helped yesterday, but gusty winds saw two major blazes upgraded to the highest “emergency” level again, with authorities urging communities not to be complacent.
A pilot become the second person to die in the bushfire emergency when his fixed-wing aircraft went down in a remote area south of Sydney as it responded to a blaze near the town of Ulladulla.
Reports said a wing snapped off before the crash.
“It’s a tragedy for the firefighting community, but first and foremost it’s a tragedy for this man’s family,” said NSW Rural Fire Service head Shane Fitzsimmons, who lost his own father in a bushfire in 2000.
An ambulance officer was winched into the rugged terrain where the crash happened and confirmed David Black, 43, was dead.
He was unable to recover the body because of fires that were still burning in the area.
One of the biggest and fiercest infernos still alight — which has a perimeter of more than 300km and has ripped through 47,000 hectares of land — was started by the military, a fire service investigation found.
The huge blaze near the town of Lithgow, which flared again yesterday, was a major worry this week with authorities on Tuesday deciding to deliberately merge it with another nearby fire at Mount Victoria to prevent conditions from deteriorating.
The official investigation found it was started by exploding ordnance on a live firing range on Wednesday last week.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS