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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, FEBRUARY 18, 1983
PAGE 12
In Australia, worst Drought in History Spawns Massive Fires
On the heels of the worst drought in living memory in Australia--some areas
have not received rain for four years--have come the most devastating brush
fires in nearly
50
years. Here is a report received over our UPI teletype,
dated February 17, 1983:
Walls of fire roared through two southern Australian states for
the second day today, killing at least 69 people and destroying
nearly 2,000 homes in the nation's worst brush fires in nearly
50
years. At least seven small towns were reported to have been
totally destroyed in what a government official called "one of
the greatest tragedies in 2.!d!. history." A stunned Prime Min'Tster
Malcolm Fraser toured stricken areas, some where looting was re
ported, and called the devastation "a holocaust••••"
Previously, the worst Australian bushfires in terms of casualties
were recorded in 1939, when 71 perished in Victoria. "But the
destruction of land and homes in these incredible fires in two
states far eclipses that '39 blaze in Victoria," a spokesman for
the Central Fire Authority said.
A dispatch the same day over our AP machine reported the· fire scene in this
manner:
"It was like a giant flame thrower," said one weary firefighter.
"The�nd was like it came from a huge hair dryer," said a man who
lost his house--one of 3,000 homes destroyed in seven towns that
were consumed by wind-driven flames Wednesday and Thursday.
"The fire-hit areas of Victoria looked like they had been
attacked by napalm," said Adm. Sir James Murray, the governor of
Victoria state. "A panzer division going through could not have
caused so much damage," said Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser after
an inspection tour.
More than 4,000 firefighters ·had most of the fires under control
by Thursday. The flames, fanned by gale-force winds, devastated
2,600 square miles of drought-stricken farmland, forest and scrub
along� 500-mile stretch of Australia's southeast coast in the
states of South Australia and Victoria. With the Southern Hemi
sphere's summer at its height, the worst drought in Australian
history spawned brush fires that 60-mile winds from the central
desert whipped through the Adelaide Hills and down the south
coast past Melbourne into the Dandenong Ranges. The gale winds
shot tongues of flame
300
feet through pine plantations and euca
lyptus forests. Fully grown pine trees snapped like matchsticks.
As in the United States, there is a "morality connection" between Aus
tralia's current "trial by fire" and social conditions in that country.
Perhaps more on that next time or sometime soon.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau