Sydney firefighters battle to save suburban homes

Helicopters dumped water and firefighters filled buckets from backyard swimming pools in a desperate battle to save homes from a wildfire that raged through Sydney’s suburbs today.

Flames as high as 60ft produced towering clouds of thick black smoke as they burned within yards of houses and just 11 miles from the centre of Sydney, Australia’s largest city.

The blaze was the closest to have come to the heart of Sydney since the wildfires crisis started on Christmas Eve.

Police said it appeared to have been deliberately lit, like more than half of the 100 other fires that have plagued New South Wales state for the past nine days.

Eight people have been arrested on suspicion of arson and face a maximum of 14 years in prison if convicted.

Soaring temperatures approaching 38C (100F), and gusty Outback winds whipped up what officials said was an unprecedented day of bush fires. Flames jumped firebreaks and containment lines set up by 15,000 weary, mainly volunteer, firefighters during the weekend.

By tonight, scores of blazes were burning out of control many of them ringing Sydney, home to four million people.

The fire in Sydney’s Lane Cove National Park, a corridor of tinder-dry bushland that winds its way through the city’s affluent North Shore suburbs, caused no casualties. However, it mimicked a fire disaster that hit in 1994, killing four people.

‘‘Mother nature is throwing her very worst at us,’’ said John Winter of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.

As night fell, the winds died, allowing firefighters to regroup and prepare for another hard day.

‘‘The next 24 hours won’t give us any let up,’’ Winter said. ‘‘We are really here for the long haul.’’

Officials said fire crews saved all 250 homes that had been threatened in Sydney, but admitted that the power and speed of the inferno had surprised them.

‘‘This fire is burning quite ferociously,’’ said state fire chief Phil Koperberg. ‘‘The situation remains grave at best.’’

More than 300 firefighters in yellow jackets braved black smoke and fought flames from backyards and gardens in the suburbs of Pennant Hills, North Epping and South Turramurra.

Residents were ordered to stay indoors. Officials said conditions were too dangerous for mass evacuations. Some owners sprayed their homes with garden hoses.

‘‘I was freaked out. The smoke was blinding,’’ resident Claire Marnane said. ‘‘We could hear the sap from inside trees exploding, it was so hot.’’

The blazes, dubbed the ‘‘Black Christmas’’ fires, have destroyed 150 homes and blackened 741,000 acres of forest and farmland since December 24.

Separately today, fires forced dozens of residents from homes in Kurrajong, in the Blue Mountains, 31 miles north-west of Sydney, as well as from homes in bushland along the Hawkesbury River, 25 miles north of Sydney.

Scores of people also evacuated from Sussex Inlet, 60 miles south of Sydney.

Firefighters extinguished a large forest fire on the southern outskirts of Canberra, the national capital.

New South Wales state Premier Bob Carr said the fight against the fires had reached a critical stage after weather forecasters predicted that hot, dry conditions would continue for days.