As thousands of people flee coastal towns threatened by horrendous bushfires, emergencies have been declared in two Australian states and a police investigation launched into the cause of recent blazes.
A state of emergency began in New South Wales (NSW) - where more than 140 fires burn, many uncontrollably - on Friday, and will stay in force for seven days. In declaring the emergency, the state premier Gladys Berejiklian said the bushfire season was the "most devastating" in living memory.
It is the third such declaration this bushfire season, with the first on November 11, followed by a second on December 19.
But conditions in the Australian state have only got worse since then, with many killed in the colossal blazes, hundreds of buildings destroyed, and thousands forced to evacuate the beachfront towns on the South Coast.
On Thursday, the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) ordered tourists to leave the South Coast by Saturday - when even worse fires are expected. Other areas north of the fire-ravaged Bateman's Bay have since been included under the 'Widespread Extreme Fire Danger' notice. Residents have been lining up at service stations and supermarkets for hours trying to stock up.
In a media conference on Friday morning, RFS deputy commissioner Rob Rodgers said the focus of Saturday was the "preservation of life".
"There is a 50km-plus stretch of fire likely to come back across the border tomorrow. That combined with fires already in that part of the state will have a fire front stretching 60-70km long. We can't stop those fires, we can't stop those fires we already have," he said, according to the Guardian.
Areas further inland near the Kosciuszko National Park have also been declared leave zones.
NSW's Emergency Services Minister David Elliott was on holiday as the state of emergency was declared and is meant to fly back to Australia on Friday.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that NSW police have launched an investigation into the South Coast fires, with Strike Force Indarra set to look into all aspects of the fire, including the fatalities, the loss of livestock, the cause of the fires and the destruction of buildings.
Further south in Victoria, a state of disaster has been declared for eastern parts of the state, including East Gippsland which has been the hardest. The country's Navy has begun evacuating people from Mallacoota, where about 4000 people have been stranded on the beachfront.
At least two people have died in the state, while 17 remain missing.
It is the first time the Victorian Government has used the state of disaster powers since they were introduced in 2009.
Both the NSW and Victorian Government will now be able to direct agencies to conduct any function, to control the allocation of resources, evacuate people, among other things.
