NSW police have meanwhile appealed for public assistance as they investigate the cause of several bushfires along the state’s mid-north coast. Follow the day’s news live
Queenslanders in fire zones urged to pay attention to warnings
Turning to Queensland now, where the state’s Fire and Emergency Service chief, Tony Johnston, has spoken to ABC News Breakfast with an update on the bushfires across the state.
There’s been a number of structures that have been impacted but as you can appreciate, until the fire is actually contained, we won’t have a good picture of what’s actually been lost … When the crews can actually get in and ascertain the damage, we’ll have a full report.
Fires are spotting 200 metres in front of the fires themselves.
We’re asking residents to pay attention to the messaging. The messaging is important to enact your plan and what you’re going to do. Today is not a day to go sightseeing to see what’s happening in a fire area.
A lot of them are not easily contained. Some of those fires have been burning for quite some time. There’s a number of challenging fronts that we’ve got and obviously, worsening weather tomorrow that will cause a lot of problems with these fires and potentially new ones.
I know investigators are looking into a number of those fires and working with [police]. We have to wait for these fires to get under control before we can get in and assess the damage and carry out these investigations.
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