Australian Bushfires Tamed

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, January 10, 2002

Australian Bushfires Tamed

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Australian authorities said Wednesday the worst of the bushfires that devastated more than half a million hectares of southeast Australian bushland were over, leaving firefighters to mop up smouldering containment lines.

"For now the peak is over," New South Wales (NSW) Rural Fire Service Commissioner Phil Koperberg said.

"A very significant mopping-up operation has begun. There are hundreds of kilometres (miles) of fire perimeter which have varying degrees of fire on them," he added.

A revised list of damage caused by the 100 bushfires that ravaged 569,000 hectares (1.4 million acres) of land since Christmas Eve shows 115 houses were destroyed and 6,000 head of livestock were killed.

Thousands of koalas, kangaroos, possums, birds and rare reptiles were unable to escape the infernos.

The NSW government has estimated the cost of the fire-fighting operation topped 70 million dollars (35 million US) and insurers say claims will come to at least another 70 million dollars.

At one stage, 15,000 firefighters were fighting blazes on a 2,000-kilometre (1,240-mile) front. No lives have been lost in the crisis.

Since heavy rains on Monday extinguished bushfires in other areas, firefighters have concentrated on the blazes still burning in the coastal region where firefighters said Wednesday they were in control of a 45-kilometre (28-mile) wall of fire that had threatened holiday towns.

NSW Rural Fire Service spokesman Mark Sullivan warned the situation was still highly volatile and said two giant Erickson Air-Crane Helitankers, urgently commissioned from the United States, were water-bombing the fires around two small holiday towns on the NSW south coast.

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