Wildfires in the Australian state of Victoria have killed at least one person, destroyed dozens of homes and burned nearly 900,000 acres since last week, authorities said Sunday.
The fires were sparked by a searing heat wave across much of the country that brought record-breaking temperatures and created the worst fire conditions since Australia’s deadly Black Summer fires in 2019 and 2020. Most were started by lightning strikes last Thursday.
More than 30 wildfires were burning across Victoria on Sunday, Jacinta Allan, the state premier, said at a news conference Sunday morning.
Some were near the northeast border with the state of New South Wales. Others were in Great Otway National Park, near the scenic Great Ocean Road on the southern coast, or outside towns north of Melbourne, the state capital and the country’s second-largest city.
The heat wave eased Sunday in Victoria, after peaking Friday with temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit. That drop allowed firefighters to begin reining in some of the fires. But conditions remained warm and windy, and a total fire ban remained in place across the state.
“Today is another difficult day for fire in the landscape in many parts of Victoria,” Allan said, adding that more than 860,000 acres had burned in the state. “It continues to be warm, it continues to be windy and there are already existing fires.”
One of Victoria’s largest wildfires Sunday was burning near Longwood, a town of fewer than 300 people that is 70 miles northeast of Melbourne, a city of about 5 million. The fire has a perimeter of about 250 miles and has destroyed about 150 structures, said Tim Wiebusch, Victoria’s emergency management commissioner.
He added that dozens of the hundreds of structures destroyed in the Victoria fires were homes.
One person’s remains were found in the area around the Longwood fire, the Victoria Police said Sunday, adding that the person had not been formally identified.
Another destructive fire razed buildings in the town of Harcourt, where authorities said that 47 homes and three businesses were lost. That fire was 80% contained Sunday, Allan said.
Three firefighters were injured fighting the blazes, authorities said.
As the fires burned in Victoria, other parts of Australia were experiencing extreme weather events.
In the northeast, parts of the state of Queensland were lashed with rain and damaging winds as a tropical storm made landfall early Sunday. The storm had weakened as it approached the coast.
Between Saturday night and Sunday morning, some regions in Far North Queensland saw more than 14 inches of rain, according to local authorities. They warned that rainfall was likely to continue and that flash flooding was possible.
Although the heat wave had eased for Victoria, high temperatures were expected to linger for other parts of the country. In neighboring New South Wales, the southern part of the state was under a severe heat wave warning for Sunday, but conditions were expected to ease from Monday, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Australia’s northwest — a sparsely populated region known for its concentration of mining operations — was forecast to experience severe to extreme heat wave conditions this week, with temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit possible.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, speaking at a news conference Sunday, said Australia was spending more on severe weather events that were becoming more common and intense.
“The fact that we have at one time floods in one area, fires in another and heat waves that do cause other issues as well, means there is a cost of the changing weather patterns that we are seeing,” he said.
This story was originally published at nytimes.com. Read it here.