The weather bureau says a heat spike today will see dangerous fire conditions across south-eastern Australia. A catastrophic fire rating has been issued for south Australia's Yorke Peninsula and Eastern Eyre Peninsula.
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00:0010 of our 15 fire danger districts are in total fire ban today.
00:05Those two that you've mentioned, both the Eastern Eyre Peninsula and York Peninsula
00:09are in catastrophic conditions.
00:11The remaining eight are extreme today.
00:14So we're expecting some really hot, windy conditions throughout the day, with a change
00:20coming through sort of mid-morning and into Adelaide by later this afternoon and early
00:25evening that we'll see wind conditions in excess of 70 and 80 kilometres an hour, making
00:30the conditions really tough for us.
00:31It's actually a three-stage challenge that we've got.
00:34It's the heat and the really strong gusty winds, but also the fact that during the winter
00:38months we haven't had our usual levels of rainfall.
00:42So the fuel is particularly dry out there.
00:44The soil is particularly dry, which means if we do have something start in the landscape
00:48today, it's going to move very quickly and very erratically across the state.
00:52So there's been a lot of work conducted by our partner agency, the Department of Environment
00:56and Water, that have spent a lot of time doing fuel reduction burning and fuel clearing throughout
01:01the cooler months, which goes a long way to provide support to crews on the ground.
01:06But we do obviously ask that homeowners, property owners, do some of that themselves to maintain
01:12their own safety and security around their properties.
01:14For specifically today, we are asking residents that might have been conducting burn-offs
01:19for the last couple of weeks, to make sure they're out checking those burn-offs to ensure
01:23that they're not going to rekindle and start a fire today.
01:27Because of the high temperatures and strong winds, we're seeing burn-offs that have been
01:30left for some period of time reigniting, and we've already had a few of those jobs.