Sydney was encircled by flames and wreathed in smoke for a second day yesterday as huge bush fires destroyed more than 150 homes on an apparently inexorable march towards Australia's largest city. The fires are expected to worsen over the next few days, helped by dry, hot weather.
Residents, volunteers and 5,000 firefighters spent Christmas and St Stephen's Day struggling to repel 430 miles of fire, fanned by hot desert winds. The New South Wales fire service said it was a miracle there had been no deaths from more than 100 blazes spread into an arc across the densely-wooded national parks which surround Sydney.
Many people could only watch helplessly as their wooden-framed homes exploded into flames. Ms Angela Quigley cried after begging police manning roadblocks to be allowed back to where her house once stood south of Sydney. "My home has been burnt to the ground. My dad's boat is gone, my mum's cat is dead," she said. "All our memories, all our photos are gone." Mr Dave Twohill, drummer for the long-running Australian band Mental as Anything, watched as his house was destroyed by fire yesterday. "Our insurance has lapsed and we lost the lot," he said. In the western suburbs of Silverdale and Warragamba, 30 houses and a shopping centre were destroyed. At Mulgoa, 40 miles west of central Sydney, residents abandoned Christmas celebrations and used their clothes to beat back blazes threatening their properties. Other residents not immediately threatened by the fires took Christmas dinners out to the volunteer fire crews. But in many areas even professional fire crews were powerless to stop the spreading fires, which jumped main roads and rivers as flames leapt up to 60 metres high.
"We have never seen anything like that before," said the NSW rural fire commissioner, Mr Phil Koperberg. Mr Koperberg said most of the fires around Sydney had been deliberately lit. "We live in a part of the world where fires are as part of life as summer," he said. "But to have the majority of fires lit by people, threatening the lives of hundreds of people and destroying possessions of hundreds more, is a sad reflection on these people." Police are investigating at least seven suspected cases of arson after several sightings of people near where fires began.