Australia scrambles to reach fire victims

Bloomberg

Australia scrambled military helicopters and ships on Wednesday to help thousands of people cut off by wildfires raging across the southeast as the death toll from the national crisis continued to climb.
Some 4,000 holiday-makers and locals remain stranded in the remote township of Mallacoota in Victoria state after a bushfire tore through the community, forcing people to shelter on the beach or escape by boats. The terrifying scenes were repeated in dozens of small towns in rural, forested parts of the state and across the border in New South Wales, as the infernos turned the sky a blood red and rained down embers and ash on locals and tourists during the peak summer holiday season.
“The fire was ferocious, it was angry,” Lorena Granados, who battled in vain to save her home in the small town of Mogo, told the ABC. “The fire was just throwing the water back on us. It was like a demon attacking us.”
Seven people, including a volunteer firefighter, have been killed this week in New South Wales, police said, taking the confirmed national death toll since the blazes broke out several weeks ago to at least 16.
A man was found dead Wednesday in Victoria’s East Gippsland region, though police could not confirm whether it was fire-related. With several people unaccounted for, more than 150 fires still burning in the two states and extreme temperatures and strong winds forecast for Saturday, authorities fear the death toll will rise.
The crisis has triggered an emotive debate about the impact of global warming in Australia, the world’s driest-inhabited continent. It has also fueled criticism of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s conservative government, which strongly advocates for the nation’s massive coal-export industry and rejects criticism it is not doing enough to curb emissions.
There appears no end in sight to the bushfire emergency, which is impacting all of Australia’s six states amid a prolonged drought gripping much of the country.
“We have got three months of hot weather to come. We have a dynamic and a dangerous fire situation across the state,” Victoria’s Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp said.