By Rohan Sullivan
The Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia — Officials said Monday that arsonists were likely responsible for lighting some of the more than 50 wildfires that raged over the weekend around Sydney, destroying seven homes and bringing an early, menacing start to Australia’s fire season.
Hundreds of firefighters worked containment lines on dozens of fires Monday, a day after blazes erupted on three sides of Australia’s largest city, fanned by 100 kph (60 mph) winds combined with unseasonably scorching temperatures ahead of the country’s Southern Hemisphere summer.
A cool change eased the conditions late Sunday, but not before seven houses were razed — four at Picton about 60 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of the city and three at Cattai, 50 kilometers (30 miles), to the northwest — and charring more than 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres).
Officials said Monday afternoon that all of the blazes had been contained.
The early fires, combined with parched terrain due to drought conditions throughout the country, fanned fears about the coming fire season, which usually runs from December through February.
“We are very concerned that this summer will be one of our worst bushfire risks ever,” said John Thwaites, environment minister for neighboring Victoria state.
The winds Sunday caused other chaos in the Sydney area, cutting power lines and leaving an estimated 100,000 without electricity, suppliers said. One man was killed Sunday when wind felled a branch that hit him as he rode his motorcycle, police said.
New South Wales state Rural Fire Service Commissioner Phil Koperberg, touring the burned out Picton region on Monday, said Sunday’s conditions were almost impossible for firefighters to deal with.
He said investigations were under way into the causes of the fires, but initial signs suggested some — including one where officials had identified eight ignition points but no fallen power lines, campers or other potential causes — were started by arsonists.
“Some of the fires ... we suspect very strongly were the consequence of arson,” he told reporters.
State police Commissioner Ken Moroney said any arson suspects caught would be vigorously prosecuted. People convicted of lighting bushfires face 20 years in prison.
Wild fires are a regular feature of Australian summer months, burning thousands of hectares (acres) of forests and sometimes blasting into towns and cities with deadly results.
Downed cables, discarded cigarettes butts and lightning strikes are more often the causes of such fires than arson, though investigators say a worrying number of fires are deliberately lit.
Scientists warned that Sunday’s fires bode ill for later in the year, when temperatures across southern Australia soar and wildfires are a constant threat.
Kevin O’Loughlin, the head of the government-funded Bushfire Cooperative Research Center, noted that Australia had reported its hottest, driest August on record this year and that the country was in the grip of a serious drought.
“It’s a major concern that fire seasons seem to be starting earlier and lasting longer,” O’Loughlin told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. He said studies were needed to find out if there was a connection between global warming and higher fire risks.
Authorities have been working for months clearing underbrush and creating fire breaks in national parks and in forest land that abuts many Australian cities in expectation of a bad season.
In 2003, hundreds of houses were destroyed and four people killed when a huge blaze tore into the national capital, Canberra. Last January, nine people died in fires on South Australia state’s Eyre Peninsula.