Firefighters brace for more blazes across southeast Australia
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-30 10:47

Firefighters battled to contain scores of wild fires in scorching, tinder dry conditions across southeast Australia on Friday, and were bracing for more devastating blazes in the days ahead, a fire service spokeswoman said.

Firefighters contained 20 fires in New South Wales state Friday, including a major blaze in Muswellbrook, just north of Sydney, which burnt out 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of farm and grass land overnight, said state Rural Fire Service spokeswoman Rebel Talbert.

One fire destroyed two farm sheds near Muswellbrook, and strayed close to several rural homes and industrial conveyor belts used to shift coal from mines to the local power station.

"We're looking at the possibility of having a statewide total fire ban tomorrow and Sunday purely because of the hot weather," Talbert said. A total ban bars all controlled fires including barbecues and the burning of domestic or garden waste.

"We're getting some very hot northwesterly winds and 40 degree Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) days," she said.

A total fire ban has already been imposed in the state's sparsely populated central western plains and in neighboring Victoria state to the south.

Victoria's Country Fire Authority warned there was an extreme risk of fire in western districts after more than 100 fires broke out across the state Thursday.

Also Thursday, a grass fire razed at least two houses in an upmarket suburb of the capital Canberra, southwest of Sydney. No one was injured.

Authorities have warned that an unusually wet spring followed by the dry summer conditions have created an abundance of fuel in the New South Wales countryside surrounding Canberra.

This summer's fire risk is expected to be the most severe since January 2003 when wild fires destroyed more than 500 Canberra homes and left four people dead on a single day.

Most wild fires in Australia start because of natural causes such as lightning, although arsonists are sometimes blamed.

Nine people died in wild fires that scorched South Australia state's Eyre Peninsula in January this year.