Australia PM Julia Gillard visits wildfire ravaged Tasmania

 
Wildfires: Some of the devastation caused by Tasmania fires
Bo Wilson7 January 2013

Australian prime minister Julia Gillard was today visiting wildfire-ravaged areas as rescue teams searched for bodies.

Acting Police Commissioner Scott Tilyard said today no casualties had yet been reported in the state of Tasmania. But it would take time before officials were certain that no one had died in the blazes that have razed 50,000 acres of forests and farmland across the south of the state since Friday.

Police have concerns for about 100 people reported missing. Mr Tilyard said 11 teams were searching ruins in places including the small town of Dunalley, east of the state capital of Hobart, where around 70 homes were destroyed.

“Until we’ve had the opportunity to do all the screening that we need to do at each of those premises, we can’t say for certain that there hasn’t been a human life or more than one human life lost as a result of these fires,” Tilyard told reporters.

Three fires continued to burn out of control in southern Tasmania and in the northwest Monday.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who flew to Tasmania today, warned that New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, was about to move into a period of extreme heat tomorrow when the wildfire risk would be high.

“We live in a country that is hot and dry and where we sustain very destructive fire periodically,” she said. “Whilst you would not put any one event down to climate change ... we do know over time that as a result of climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events and conditions.”

New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said more than 90 wildfires were blazing across the state today and warned that conditions would worsen tomorrow. No homes were currently under threat.

“It is going to be very hot and very dry. Couple that with the dryness of the vegetation, the grassland fuels, the forest fuels and those strong winds that are expected tomorrow,” he said.

The temperature across much the state was expected to reach 45 degrees C while winds were expected as high as 50 miles an hour.

Wildfires are common during the Australian summer. In February 2009, hundreds of fires across Victoria state killed 173 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes.

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