Queensland fire crews battle 420 fires
Two people have died, and 32 homes have been destroyed by a bushfire burning on Queensland’s western downs. While conditions have eased in that area a warning has been issued for a fast-moving bushfire north of Mount Isa. Residents on Lake Moondarra Road have been told it’s not safe to return to their properties.
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TVTranscript
00:00 Yes, that's right, Karina.
00:04 So there was a leave immediately, notice put out a little bit earlier on for Lake Moondahra,
00:09 which is about 20 minutes drive north of Mount Isa City.
00:15 That has since been downgraded to a watch and act, but not safe to return warning that
00:21 is in place now.
00:22 But that lake, that's actually a lake that's 20 minutes drive from Mount Isa.
00:26 There's a lot of walking tracks around that area.
00:30 It's hard to actually get in there, so it's very inaccessible.
00:33 So it's understood that water bombers were going to be used today to try and extinguish
00:38 that blaze.
00:39 And really the conditions, as we heard from Toby, are right across the state in some areas,
00:47 but we do have still extreme fire conditions and high fire conditions for most of the state
00:53 and really extreme fire conditions out west today.
00:57 And we saw a couple of fires spark up around, well, there was one in the scenic rim, which
01:03 is southwest of Brisbane at Arndulla.
01:07 That sparked up yesterday and we saw another one in far north Queensland at Mareeba, which
01:15 also popped up.
01:16 But both of those are now at a lower level of the stay in forms level.
01:20 And there's a fire that a lot of people have been talking about, Corinna, that's been at
01:23 the Carnarvon Gorge.
01:25 This is a monster fire that has been burning for about a month.
01:29 But the thing with this fire is that there's no people around this area.
01:32 It's a national park.
01:34 This fire has burnt through, the figures are 160,000 hectares of land.
01:41 And the fire front on this one is about 480 kilometres.
01:47 Just gives you the scale of this.
01:48 So that shows that this fire season started very, very early.
01:52 We did hear a little bit earlier on from Peter Hollier from the Rural Fire Service of Queensland.
01:59 He spoke about some of the dry lightning strikes that have started some of these fires.
02:05 The challenge is storms again.
02:07 So we had storms the night before last.
02:09 We had storms last night.
02:11 Every time we're receiving storms, we're getting dry lightning that's occurring.
02:14 Out of that dry lightning, we're getting new ignitions, new fires.
02:18 So even this morning, as we speak, 20 fires in total across the state.
02:22 Yes, we've had over 400 odd this week, which has been challenging.
02:28 But if we don't get on top of the new ignitions and get on top of the quick while the weather's
02:31 favourable, particularly on the coast, we need to make sure that we keep those fires
02:36 small and get them under control.
02:38 Yeah, really difficult conditions for fire crews.
02:41 What are conditions like across the state, Michael?
02:45 Yes, so what we do have, look, a lot of high fire danger areas for most of the state of
02:51 Queensland really.
02:52 And it's really just out west that we have that extreme fire danger.
02:56 But right now in Brisbane, where I am, look, it's definitely a lot cooler than it has been.
03:02 And we've got cooler conditions here.
03:05 But that's not the case for a lot of the state today.
03:08 So look, the fire crews, they'll be busy again today and heading into the weekends and next
03:15 week as well when we've got those temperatures going right back up right across the state.
03:18 But this week alone, Corina, 420 fires.
03:22 That's around 420 fires.
03:24 That's what Queensland fire crews have had to deal with.
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