{"id":11977,"date":"2019-11-20T11:53:21","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T06:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/?p=11977"},"modified":"2019-11-20T11:53:21","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T06:53:21","slug":"australia-fires-warnings-issued-for-four-blazes-burning-under-catastrophic-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/archives\/11977","title":{"rendered":"Australia Fires: Warnings Issued for Four Blazes Burning Under Catastrophic Conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Heat and winds are threatening to widen Australia&#8217;s bushfire crisis, with two states warned to expect their worst conditions of the season so far.<\/p>\n<p>Soaring temperatures in South Australia prompted &#8220;catastrophic&#8221; alerts &#8211; the highest danger rating &#8211; on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Residents near the Port Wakefield Highway at Port Wakefield and Yorketown on the lower Eyre Peninsula are being warned they are in danger.<\/p>\n<p>Fires in South Australia prompted emergency warnings on Wednesday as temperatures neared 45C (113F) in parts of the state. Winds of up to 90km\/h (55mph) exacerbated the threat.<\/p>\n<p>Officials switched off electricity to about 10,000 homes and businesses to reduce the risk of new fires breaking out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All areas of the state are in danger today, with the potential for fires which do start to be uncontrollable by fire crews,&#8221; a Country Fire Service spokeswoman told\u00a0 media.<\/p>\n<p>Tasmania is also predicted to see its worst conditions yet on Thursday, though its forecast is less extreme.<\/p>\n<p>Six people have died since last month in massive bushfires which are burning elsewhere in the country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-vz0241\">A Watch and Act warning has been issued for the Stott Highway at Angaston in the Barossa and residents at Price on the upper Yorke Peninsula.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-vz0241\">Residents in there areas are advised to take action now as the bushfire may threaten safety.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-vz0241\">&#8220;If you are not prepared, leave now and if the path is clear, go to a safer place,&#8221; the CFS said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-vz0241\">The CFS says conditions are continually changing.<\/p>\n<p>Those blazes &#8211; in New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland &#8211; have destroyed more than 500 houses and prompted debates on the impacts of drought and climate change.<\/p>\n<p>The southern state has endured its driest first nine months of any year on record, said Australia&#8217;s Bureau of Meteorology. No significant rainfall is forecast for the coming months.<\/p>\n<p>In NSW and Queensland, officials warned that heat from the centre of the country could escalate blazes later in the week.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists and experts say that Australia&#8217;s fire season has grown longer and more intense due to climate change.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/14A37\/production\/_109753548_0f7c8d4d-fdc4-47c8-bf71-94cf156a1c64.jpg\" alt=\"Tiny silhouette of a firefighter framed against a wall of flame in the Wollemi National Park fire north-west of Sydney on 19 November 2019\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/><\/span>Fires continue to burn across New South Wales and Queensland<\/figure>\n<p>According to the Bureau of Meteorology, climate change had led to an increase in extreme heat events and raised the severity of other natural disasters, such as drought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heat and winds are threatening to widen Australia&#8217;s bushfire crisis, with two states warned to expect their worst conditions of the season so far. Soaring temperatures in South Australia prompted &#8220;catastrophic&#8221; alerts &#8211; the highest danger rating &#8211; on Wednesday. Residents near the Port Wakefield Highway at Port Wakefield and Yorketown on the lower Eyre [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":11978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1417,1466,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-environment","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11977"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11980,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11977\/revisions\/11980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}