Several fires, which started last weekend in the Grampians National Park, about 150 miles west of Melbourne, were still out of control on Friday.
Fires near a national park in Australia’s southeastern Victoria state have burned 74,000 hectares of forest since last week, an area equivalent to Singapore, state officials said.
“74,000 hectares were burned, which corresponds to the size of Singapore”, declared the deputy head of the regional government of Victoria, Ben Carrol, at a press conference, cited by the Spanish agency EFE.
With around 5.9 million inhabitants, the city-state of Singapore, in Southeast Asia, has an area equivalent to 73,500 hectares, that is, 735 square kilometers, while Australia has 7,688 square kilometers.
Several fires, which started last weekend in Grampians National Park, about 240 kilometers west of Melbourne, were still out of control on Friday.
Around 600 emergency personnel were involved in fighting the flames.
Today’s weather conditions were considered by firefighters to be more favorable for trying to control the forest fires, after a difficult day of wind and heat on Thursday.
“While milder conditions are expected today, areas close to active bushfires remain dangerous,” said Victoria State Control Center spokesperson Luke Heagerty.
About 2,600 residents in 34 small towns near the fires were evacuated from the area as a precaution, but Heagerty admitted the evacuation orders could soon be lifted.
So far, the fires have caused no casualties or loss of homes, although they have affected farm buildings and killed an unknown number of animals.
“The extraordinary efforts of firefighters on the ground made it possible to contain the fires before they affected the population,” declared the spokesperson.
Australia’s fire season varies depending on area and weather conditions, but generally occurs in the southern summer, between December and March.
Between 2019 and 2020, during the so-called “black summer”, at least 33 people died in fires that devastated much of the states of Victoria and New South Wales.
The fires affected millions of animals at the time, and destroyed around 3,000 homes and 180,000 square kilometers of forest in the country of Oceania.
