Sydney, Australia — Rain doused wildfires near Sydney, clearing the air of smoke today for the first time in more than two weeks of an inferno that destroyed 170 homes and burned 1.2 million acres.
Wildfires still threatened the tiny coastal hamlet of Fisherman's Paradise in the Shoalhaven region, about 120 miles south of Sydney, where as many as 2,000 people had been ordered to evacuate a day earlier. Most residents were allowed to return home today as winds shifted.
Rain poured Monday for the first time in almost three weeks and extinguished some fires burning to the north and west of Sydney.
Weary firefighters sang and danced in that rain and hoped for an end to the emergency, in which more than 100 blazes burned out of control across New South Wales, Australia's most populous state.
About half of those fires were set deliberately.
"This rain is a Godsend," said Joff Medder, one of 20,000 firefighters many volunteer battling the fires since Dec. 24.
Up to two inches of rain fell Monday in the Blue Mountains national park 50 miles west of Sydney, reducing fires there to smoldering embers.
The scope of the damage was evident when the smoke cleared, as huge swaths of bushland were blackened.
Officials said firefighters from other states soon would return home, and a total fire ban within Sydney's city limits was lifted.
"The rain has brought considerable relief to the firefighting effort," fire chief Phil Koperberg said. "But this rain will go. We will return to hot summer weather. The high temperatures will return, the winds will return."
Firefighters south of Sydney prepared to engage in house-to-house battles against the oncoming fire front, officials said. The peril was magnified by erratic wind gusts that kept helicopters from dumping water on the fast-moving fires.
Strong winds were blamed for the crash of a single-engine plane being used to drop retardant on fires near Moruya, 220 miles south of Sydney. The pilot, who was alone, was not injured.
There have been no deaths reported in the fires. Police have arrested 24 people, many of them children and teen-agers, for allegedly starting blazes.
Wildlife officials estimate thousands of native Australian animals, including koalas, have been killed or injured in the fires.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.