Residents of an Australian region hit by bushfires were given two hours on Tuesday to return to their homes and gather their belongings before Christmas, as emergency teams worked to control the blaze.
Evacuations were ordered in communities around the Grampians in Victoria, with authorities warning that conditions in the coming days could be the most severe since Australia’s record-breaking “Black Summer” fire season of 2019-2020.
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The bushfires have already scorched over 41,000 hectares (101,000 acres) in the past week, though no deaths or property losses have been reported.
With intense heat forecast for Boxing Day, additional fire warnings have been issued across the country. Temperatures in Victoria are expected to soar to 40°C (104°F), accompanied by strong, dry winds.
Parts of South Australia and New South Wales are also bracing for bushfire conditions later this week, from Thursday into Friday.
“We’re expecting to see extreme fire danger across almost the entire state,” Luke Hegarty, a spokesman for Victoria’s State Control Centre, said.
“This is the most significant fire danger that the state has seen – across the whole sections of state that we’re talking about – since Black Summer. It’s important that people understand that Thursday is a day with serious potential,” he added.
In the coming days, over 100 personnel from four interstate firefighting teams and two incident management units will arrive in Victoria to relieve emergency crews who have been working tirelessly to combat the ongoing bushfires.
The decision to allow residents near the Grampians temporary access to their homes on Tuesday morning was made by the state’s Country Fire Authority (CFA) Chief Officer, Jason Heffernan.
He explained that this would give families the opportunity to collect essential items, such as Christmas presents, before they are potentially relocated for the holiday period.
Mary Ann Brown, a resident on the southern edge of the Grampians National Park, expressed concerns about the uncertainty ahead.
She told the ABC, “We are not out of the woods until we get a really good drop of rain and that may not come until March or April, so it’s going to be a long summer.”
As parts of Australia brace for high bushfire risks this summer, the country faces an intense fire season, following quieter years since the devastating 2019-2020 bushfires that claimed hundreds of lives and scorched 24 million hectares of land.
Australia continues to grapple with the impacts of climate change, having been hit by a series of extreme weather events, including record floods and intense heatwaves.
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