Home destroyed in Australian bush fires

Two homes were destroyed and dozens more threatened as nearly 60 bush and grass fires broke out across rural areas to the west of Sydney today.

Unseasonal Spring temperatures - the hottest since 1965 - and 60-kilometre-an-hour winds fanned the flames, engulfing outlying properties, trucks and equipment in the area of the Blue Mountians. Seven rural fire fighters were injured, two with minor burns and others treated for smoke inhalation as school students and residents were evacuated in the emergency.

Road were closed and hundreds of anxious home owners were unable to return to protect their properties under threat as the fires burned out of control. At least 40 fires were uncontained. There were reports one fire truck had also been lost.

Some 500 firefighters tackled the blazes, the worst in Winmalee in the Blue Mountains and Castlereagh in western Sydney, where the homes were lost in 30C heat and tinder dry conditions. In the city of Sydney, temperatures reached over 33 degrees - 11 degrees above the norm.

Water bombing helicopters were deployed to help save homes at Castlereagh, the Rural Fire Service Inspector Ben Shepherd confirmed.

Walter Markowski, 67, lives there and saw fire in the bush land behind his home about a kilometre away.

“I got an old tank of water from off the roof and started putting out spot fires,” he said. “The wind was changing quite rapidly. It was a whirlwind going back and forward.

I put a spot fire out from the roof of my work shed. My home is all right”

“The wind was like a tornado and it kept changing the fire all the time.”

More than 3000 homes were blacked out by the emergency and the nearby F3 freeway was reduced to one lane due to poor visibility because of smoke drifting from the fires.