SYDNEY, Feb. 3 (Reuters) – Smoke haze covered Australia’s fourth largest city, Perth on Wednesday in a fast-moving wildfire that destroyed dozens of homes, complicating a tight lockdown following Western Australia’s first COVID-19 case in more than 10 months.
Authorities said the hot, dry conditions that sparked the fires in Perth’s northeastern suburbs had diminished somewhat overnight.
“We’ve had a better night than the night before, we haven’t had the effects of the fire on properties overnight, and also some milder conditions have allowed us to do some tracking,” the said. Fire Commissioner Darren Klemm to reporters.
Klemm revised the number of homes lost in the fires from 59 to 71, while urging residents to remain vigilant as erratic winds could rekindle some fires. No fatalities were reported in the fires, the origin of which is still unknown.
“It will remain a challenging fire for us for at least the next three, four or five days,” said Klemm.
Favorable weather could bring some calm, however, with possible rain on the weekend and the temperature is expected to drop to about 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit) in the coming days from the mid-1930s, authorities said.
A tropical low in the north of the state has brought heavy rainfall and gusts of wind there, and the system could move south in the coming days and bring wet weather, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said.
Two million residents of Perth, the state capital, have been incarcerated for five days until Friday after a quarantine hotel worker tested positive for the highly contagious variant of COVID-19 first discovered in Britain.
Residents must stay at home except for essential work, health care, grocery shopping or exercise, and visits to hospitals and nursing homes are prohibited.
But state authorities said fire evacuation orders will take precedence over COVID-19 lockdown rules and residents should plan to move to alternate places if emergency evacuation orders are issued.
“What we don’t want is people’s indecision about whether or not to evacuate when we require them to evacuate, so that evacuation takes precedence over any quarantine requirements of people,” Klemm said. (Reported by Renju Jose; edited by Lincoln Feast.)