WITH terrifying memories of Australia’s deadliest wildfires still fresh, residents chose to flee rather than protect their homes yesterday when new blazes broke containment lines and threatened the fringes of the country’s second-largest city.

Hurricane Ivan left Grenada a wasteland of flattened houses, twisted metal and splintered wood as it bore down on Jamaica with deadly winds and monstrous waves, prompting the Jamaican government to order half a million people to flee their homes.