2nd-Hottest New Year's Day Ever Brings Fires, Blazing Heat To SE Australia

[hatrack]

Bushfires swept across areas of NSW on Sunday destroying homes and property as the state found itself at the mercy of searing heat and strong winds that had already helped fires cut a swathe of destruction in Victoria.

On the hottest New Year's Day recorded in Sydney and the second-hottest January day ever, fires destroyed at least three homes on the Central Coast and five houses at Junee in the state's south west. In both areas, other homes were damaged, hundreds of people were evacuated, areas were blacked out and frustrated motorists were stranded on closed roads in 40 degree-plus conditions.

They were the worst of more than 40 fires in NSW after Saturday's bushfires at Stawell, in Victoria's west, had destroyed seven houses, damaged other buildings and burned more than 9,000 hectares of state forest and private land. The danger presented by Victoria's fires eased on Sunday as a southerly change brought rain to the state and helped firefighters contain blazes that had threatened other properties at Stawell and a home at Wangaratta, north-east of Melbourne.

EDIT

Temperatures around the state tipped the 44 degree mark and approached 40 degrees in southern highland areas which rarely experience temperatures over 30 degrees. The highest January temperature recorded for Sydney was 45.3 degrees Celsius in 1939.At Junee, a farmer was taken to hospital in a serious condition with burns to 60 per cent of his body, stock were lost to the fires and scores of residents were evacuated from the town's outskirts and the nearby township of Illabo.

EDIT

http://au.news.yahoo.com/060101/2/xf49.html

[NNadir]

1. They don't need Kyoto or global climate change treaties either. n/t