Thousands without power as wildfires spread

Wildfires destroyed eight houses and cut electricity lines in southern Australia, plunging much of Victoria state into chaos as hundreds of thousands were left without power, a fire official said today.

A fire caused by a lightning strike west of Melbourne destroyed one home last night, while seven others were razed in a massive blaze that has blackened 66,717 acres in the state’s northeast, according to Pat Groenhout, a Victoria state emergency spokesman. The fire also cut a main electricity circuit, plunging some 200,000 homes and businesses into darkness and affecting hundreds of traffic signals and suburban train services. Several people were caught in lifts when power went out in some buildings and had to be rescued, said Metropolitan Ambulance Service spokesman Phil Cullen.

The power was restored early today, but Victoria’s Premier Steve Bracks urged residents to conserve electricity as temperatures were set to exceed 40 degrees Celsius this week.

“This is the worst bush fire conditions we have ever had in Victoria’s history because it is going to go on and it is going to get worse,” Bracks told reporters today. ”We have never encountered this in Victoria before.”

Meanwhile, residents were being evacuated from a resort community in the Snowy Mountains of neighbouring New South Wales state, where firefighters and six water-bombing aircraft were struggling to contain a blaze, the Rural Fire Service said.

Over 3,861 square miles of Victorian forest and ranch land has been destroyed since the start of the southern hemisphere summer, when soaring temperatures and gusty winds often combine to spur the sometimes deadly blazes.

Nine people died in fires on South Australia state’s Eyre Peninsula in January 2005. Eight of them died in their cars as they tried to flee the approaching blaze. In January 2003, more than 500 houses were destroyed and four people killed when a huge fire tore through the national capital of Canberra.