Thousands of residents and holiday makers told to evacuate a swathe of Victoria as soaring temperatures and strong winds fan massive bushfires in the Australian state
A volunteer from the New South Wales Rural Fire Service works to extinguish spot fires following back burning operations in Mount Hay, in Australia’s Blue Mountains, December 28, 2019. Picture taken on December 28, 2019.
With the mercury set to top 40 degrees Celsius in Melbourne, authorities urged an estimated 30,000 tourists to leave East Gippsland, an area half the size of Belgium. The warm front is heading rapidly into New South Wales , with temperatures expected to spike on New Year's Eve as hundreds of thousands gather around the harbour city of Sydney to watch its famous firework celebrations.Almost 900 homes have been ruined and 3.48 million hectares of land burnt in NSW this bushfire season, while Sydney has been smothered by smoke for weeks on end.
Fire warnings also stretched from Western Australia through South Australia to Tasmania, in what has already been one of the toughest bushfire seasons on record.Bowing to political pressure, the federal government said on Sunday it would compensate volunteer firefighters for loss of income given the intensity of this year's bushfire season.
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