• Wildfire nears world-class space observatory in Australia

    Reuters

    A fire approaches the Newell Highway near Coonabarabran, Australia, in this handout photo provided by the Rural Fire Service on Monday.

    By James Grubel, Reuters

    CANBERRA — Raging wildfires destroyed dozens of homes and licked at Australia's leading optical space observatory on Monday, officials said, but spared giant telescopes that have mapped far-away galaxies and discovered new planets.

    Less fortunate were a father and son who police arrested after a fire was lit deliberately to destroy illegal drug laboratories they were alleged to be running in dense bushland. Police were closing in on the drug labs when the fire was lit.

    More than 140 fires are burning across vast areas in the north and west of New South Wales, Australia's most populated state, and in the island state of Tasmania despite cooler weather giving firefighters some respite.

    A searing heat wave had fueled the fires over the past week. Only one person, an elderly firefighter working alone in Tasmania, has died so far in the fires.

    The biggest blaze, with a perimeter of 60 miles, destroyed around 100,000 acres of bush-land and 28 homes around the Warrambungle National Park in New South Wales.

    A grandfather in Tasmania recounts how he saved his five grandchildren by taking sheltering under a jetty in the sea for three hours as wildfires raged around them. ITV's Paul Davies reports.

    That fire also forced the evacuation of the Siding Springs Observatory, which houses 15 major telescopes.

    Cameras inside the mountain-top observatory showed large flames and thick smoke sweeping over it. There appeared to be little damage to telescopes and dishes but scientists have been unable to visit the site yet to assess any damage.

    "We do not yet know what impact the extreme heat of the ash might have on the telescopes themselves," said Erik Lithander, acting vice chancellor of the Australian National University, which operates the observatory.

    The fire damaged five buildings at the observatory, including accommodation for visiting astronomers, but Lithander said scientists were confident the telescopes would still work.

    Siding Springs is home to the 13-ft Anglo-Australian Telescope, which has surveyed 200,000 galaxies and was instrumental in confirming the existence of dark energy.

    That discovery led to Australian Brian Schmidt sharing the 2011 Nobel Prize for physics.

    The observatory has also helped find more than 30 new planets over the past decade and is being used to map the southern sky.

    In Sydney, police arrested two men late on Sunday over a fire that broke out in the Blue Mountains National Park west of the city last week. The fire destroyed more than 50 hectares of bushland in the Blue Mountains, a popular tourist destination.

    Police said they had been aware of the illegal, outdoor drug labs but were forced to postpone a raid due to the extreme fire danger in the area last week.

    "The two sites ... were only accessible by foot and required police to trek through tick, leech and snake-infested scrubland to reach them," New South Wales police said in a statement on Monday.

    Police said a father and son had been charged with "the large commercial manufacture of a prohibited drug" and contaminating a water catchment area. The younger man was also charged with lighting the fire.

    Related stories:

    Family escapes Australian 'tornadoes of fire' by clinging to jetty for 3 hours

    PhotoBlog: Images of devastating blazes ravaging Australia

    Full international coverage from NBC News

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  • Family escapes Australian 'tornadoes of fire' by clinging to jetty for 3 hours

    A grandfather in Tasmania recounts how he saved his five grandchildren by taking sheltering under a jetty in the sea for three hours as wildfires raged around them. ITV's Paul Davies reports.

    By Jason Cumming, Staff Writer, NBC News

    As "tornadoes of fire" roared toward their home, the Holmes family fled and then jumped into the sea, clinging to a jetty for three hours to escape wildfires that have devastated Australia.

    The blaze spread swiftly in the Tasmanian town of Dunalley, Tim Holmes said. "The next thing we knew everything was on fire, everywhere, all around us," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

    Holmes said he sent his wife Tammy and their five grandchildren -- who are aged between almost 2 and 11 --  to the jetty to seek refuge from the flames, which destroyed three homes owned by the family. "There was no other escape," he added.

    Holmes sent a text message to his daughter, Bonnie Walker,  showing her children in the water.

    "It's still quite an upsetting image," Walker told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "It's of all of my five children underneath the jetty, huddled up to neck deep sea water, which is cold. I knew that that would be a challenge to keep three non-swimmers above water and with only my mom, dad and our eldest daughter.

    Read more on this story from Britain's ITV News

    "I spent a lot of time with good friends and prayed like I never prayed before and I think those prayers have been answered."

    Holmes recalled how the fire "raged for three hours" on the shore on Friday, surrounding the family with smoke. "Everything was on fire and it was just exploding all over the place," he added.

    They managed to escape after Holmes recovered his dinghy. Walker was reunited with her children on Saturday.

    Australia's record-breaking heatwave has sent temperatures soaring, melting road tar and setting off hundreds of wildfires - as well as searing new colors onto weather maps.

    The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has added dark purple and magenta to its weather forecasting map to represent temperatures of 51 to 54 degrees Celsius (123.8 to 129.2 Fahrenheit), officials said.

    PhotoBlog: Heat, high wind create 'catastrophic' fire condition in Australia

    Temperatures on the map were previously capped at 50 degrees Celsius, represented by the color black.

    Tim Holmes / AP

    Tammy Holmes and her grandchildren take refuge under a jetty as a wildfire rages nearby in Dunalley, Australia, on Friday.

    No deaths have been reported, although around 100 people haven't been accounted for since last week when a fire destroyed around 90 homes in Dunalley, which is located east of the state capital of Hobart. On Wednesday, police spokeswoman Lisa Stingel said it's likely most of those people simply haven't checked in with officials.

    Wildfires are common during the Australian summer. Fires in February 2009 killed 173 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes in Victoria state.

    ITV News is NBC News' UK partner. Reuters contributed to this report.

    Cooler temperatures are helping firefighters battle blazes across Australia but forecasters warn of hot temperatures coming this weekend. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

  • Australia's hottest day on record hampers wildfire fight

    Blazes raging across Australia have already destroyed more than 100 homes and are threatening more as dry, hot weather persists. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    By NBC News staff and wire reports

    Firefighters battled scores of wildfires raging across southeast Australia on Tuesday as authorities evacuated national parks and warned that record-level, blistering temperatures and high winds had led to "catastrophic" conditions in some areas.

    "We are shaping up for one of the worst fire danger days on record," New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said. "You don't get conditions worse than this. We are at the catastrophic level and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option."

    Catastrophic threat level is the most severe rating applicable.

    Firefighters hope cooler weather sweeping up the Australian east coast late Tuesday, which dramatically dropped temperatures in a matter of hours in some coastal towns, would ease the incendiary conditions. Monday was the hottest day on record for Australia, with the average temperature across the continent reaching 104.6 degrees F., Australia's 7 News network reported.

    The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the unprecedented temperatures left weather forecasters having to add new colors - deep purple and pink - to their charts.

    No deaths had been reported, although officials in Tasmania were still trying to find about 100 residents who had been missing since a fire tore through the small town of Dunalley, east of the state capital of Hobart, last week, destroying around 90 homes. On Tuesday, police said no bodies were found during preliminary checks of the ruined houses.

    Australia faces 'catastrophic' days

    Wildfires have razed 50,000 acres of forests and farmland across southern Tasmania since Friday. In New South Wales, the country's most populous state, the fires had burned through more than 64,000 acres of land.

    More than 130 fires were blazing across New South Wales, though only a few dozen houses were under threat by early evening. One fire was threatening about 30 homes near the small town of Cooma, south of the capital of Canberra. Cooma-Monaro shire mayor Dean Lynch told Australia's Sky News some residents had evacuated to the nearby town of Nimmitabel.


    Strong winds were hampering efforts to bring the fires under control. Wind gusts more than 60 mph were recorded in some parts of the state.

    PhotoBlog: Wildfires in Tasmania

    Arsonists have been responsible for some of the fires, 7 News reported. In western Sydney on Tuesday, three people were charged with deliberately starting a fire, the network said.

    All state forests and national parks were closed as a precaution and total fire bans were in place with temperatures surpassing 113 degrees F. in some areas.

    One volunteer firefighter suffered severe burns to his hands and face while fighting a grass fire near Gundaroo village, about 140 miles southwest of Sydney, on Monday. He was flown to a hospital in Sydney for treatment, and his condition had improved Tuesday, Fitzsimmons said.

    More coverage from 7 News

    Wildfires are common during the Australian summer. In February 2009, hundreds of fires across Victoria state killed 173 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes.

    The Associated Press, Reuters and 7 News contributed to this report; 7 News is NBC's Australian partner.

    More world stories from NBC News:

    Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

  • Australia faces 'catastrophic' days as wildfires rage in 5 of country's 6 states

    Rob Blakers / EPA

    Michelle Ardle was among the tourists evacuated Sunday after being trapped by forest fires in south-east Tasmania for two nights.

    By NBC News staff and wire reports

    CANBERRA, Australia — Australia was bracing on Monday for days of "catastrophic" fire and heat-wave conditions, with fires already burning in five states.

    Prime Minister Julia Gillard toured fire-ravaged Tasmanian townships and promised emergency aid for survivors, who told of a "fireball" that engulfed communities across the thinly populated state on Friday and Saturday.

    "The trees just exploded," local man Ashley Zanol told Australian radio, recounting a wall of flames that surrounded his truck as he carted water to assist fire crews in the hard-hit township of Murdunna, which was largely leveled by the inferno.

    Ferocious wildfires have forced hundreds of people to flee their homes in Australia's island state of Tasmania. Channel 4's Krishnan Guru-Murthy reports.

    Tasmanian police said around 100 people feared missing in bushfires had been accounted for and there had so far been no deaths as authorities combed through still-smouldering ruins of homes and vehicles, while evacuating local people and tourists.

    Bushfires were ablaze in five of Australia's six states, with 90 fires in the most populous state New South Wales, and in mountain forests around the national capital Canberra.

    On Tuesday morning, authorities were warning people living in Kybeyan valley to leave the area, where they said at least 20 homes were in the path of a blaze.

    Record heat wave
    Severe fire conditions were forecast for Tuesday, replicating those of 2009, when "Black Saturday" wildfires in Victoria state killed 173 people and caused $4.4 billion worth of damage.

    A record heat wave, which began in Western Australia on Dec. 27 and lasted eight days, was the fiercest in more than 80 years in that state.  It has spread east across the nation, making it the widest-ranging heat wave in more than a decade, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

    Chris Kidd / Pool via EPA

    Homes damaged by fire are seen from a helicopter between Dunalley and Boomer Bay, Tasmania, Australia, on Jan. 5. Hundreds of local residents and tourists took to the sea in boats to escape forest fires that burned to the waterline in Australia's island state of Tasmania.

    New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell said record-low rains have produced large fuel loads that increase the risk of fire, combined with record temperatures and high winds, Australia's 7 News reported.

    "Tomorrow [Tuesday] is not going to be just another ordinary day," he said. "Tomorrow will be perhaps the worst fire danger day this state has ever faced."

    More coverage from 7 News


    Tuesday would bring the highest "catastrophic" bushfire temperature conditions, fire officials said, warning that many blazes would likely be too fierce for fire crews to easily extinguish.

    "Any fire that burns under the predicted conditions — 40-degree (Celsius) temperatures (104 degrees F), below 10 percent humidity, winds gusting over 70 kilometers an hour (43 mph) — those conditions are by any measure horrendous," New South Wales Rural Fire Service Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers said.

    PhotoBlog: Wildfires in Tasmania destroy more than 100 homes

    In the Australian capital, Canberra, hit by a firestorm in 2003 that destroyed hundreds of homes, authorities said they were expecting the worst conditions in the decade since, with a fifth day of searing temperatures and strong winds.

    "With those winds it boosts up the fire danger significantly," the city's deputy fire chief Michael Joyce told local reporters.

    Blazes sparked by weekend lightning storms were already burning in forests surrounding the sprawling lake-and-bushland city, as they did 10 years earlier.

    Reuters contributed to this report. 7 News is NBC's Australian partner.

    More world stories from NBC News:

    Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook