More than 100 homes destroyed in Australian bushfires

Bushfires at Great Ocean Road, a tourist area in Australia, caused more than a hundred houses to burn down on Christmas Day despite the effort of about 500 firefighters and 13 firefighting aircrafts to stop the flames.

An emergency warning is still in place for Wye River, Separation Creek, Kennett River and Grey River.

Water bombing aircraft made a minimal impact on the fires, which set entire trees and hillsides alight in communities along the Great Ocean Road, officials said.

“We are expecting Lorne to be impacted by fire in the evening”, he said.

In February 2009, Victoria suffered the worst bushfires in the country’s history when 173 people were killed and hundreds were injured in multiple blazes across rural areas of the state.

The weather is expected to drop 10° Celsius overnight as a cold front arrives, but fresh winds are likely to push the fire front towards Lorne, a popular tourist centre.

Fires swept across Victoria state on Christmas Day, destroying 116 homes and forcing residents of the worst affected areas to spend the night in shelters, according to ABC.

The approximately 1600 residents and holidaymakers estimated to be in Lorne on Christmas Day are being evacuated to Torquay and others planning Surf Coast holidays are being urged to stay away.

“[It was] a odd experience looking back across the bay at all of that column of smoke whilst we were trying to enjoy our Christmas”, he said.

No fatalities have been reported during the recent fires, the CFA has said that’s more than likely due to the community’s preparedness.

“Even a dousing of rain on Saturday was unlikely to do much in the long term once the state began to dry out”.

The Great Ocean Road is one in every of Australia’s largest vacationer attracts with its spectacular surroundings and weird rock formations simply offshore in the Southern Ocean.

“The fire came in, and it’s fair to say that I would have thought that they would have lost 200 homes at least in this town”, he said.

“Our fear of this fire though – it’s here all summer”, emergency management commissioner Craig Lapsley told reporters on Sunday.