Sydney : Australia’s New South Wales on Sunday sweated in a heat wave that raised the risk of bushfires and prompted authorities to issue a total fire ban for state capital Sydney.
New South Wales, coming to the end of a high-risk bushfire season that runs until the end of March, was the focus of a catastrophic 2019-2020 “Black Summer” of wildfires that destroyed an area the size of Turkey and killed 33 people.
The state’s Rural Fire Service said on X that a total fire ban was in place for large swaths of the state, including Sydney, due to the forecast of “hot, dry and windy conditions”.
In neighbouring Victoria state, a home was destroyed in a bushfire on the outskirts of Melbourne that was being battled by around 200 firefighters, Country Fire Authority official Bernard Barbetti told the Australian Broadcasting Corp on Sunday.
Climate change is causing extreme heat and fire weather to become more common in Australia, a bushfire-prone country of around 27 million, the country’s science agency said last year.
