Australia

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Swathes of southeast Australia were bracing on Thursday for a days-long heatwave that threatens to stoke bushfires that have been burning for months.

As firefighters and residents prepared for the heightened danger, the New South Wales (NSW) state government launched a six-month inquiry to examine both the causes of and response to this season’s deadly wildfires.

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - The bodies of three U.S. firefighters who died in a plane crash earlier this week in Australia’s remote bushland while battling a fierce wildfire have been recovered, the police said on Saturday as investigators started probe into the accident.

A spokeswoman for Australia’s New South Wales state police confirmed the recovery to Reuters in an e-mail.

“They have been taken for a post mortem examination to confirm ID,” the spokeswoman said.

MELBOURNE/SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian officials were working on Friday to extricate the bodies of three U.S. firefighters from a plane that crashed in remote bushland, as the area’s “active” bushfire status complicated an investigation into the accident.

Officials said it was still too early to speculate on the cause of the crash of the C-130 Hercules tanker plane on Thursday, killing its entire crew, just after it dumped a large load of retardant on a huge wildfire in a national park.

SYDNEY (AP) — A C-130 Hercules aerial water tanker with three aboard crashed Thursday while battling wildfires in the Snowy Monaro region of Australia’s southern New South Wales state, officials said.

It was not immediately clear the condition of those aboard, and there were few other initial details.

“The only thing I have from the field reports are that the plane came down, it’s crashed and there was a large fireball associated with that crash,” Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told reporters.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Mining giant BHP Group (BHP.AX) said on Tuesday that poor air quality caused by smoke from Australia’s bushfires is hurting coal production, as authorities said a reprieve from hazardous fire conditions would end within days.

The warning from the world’s biggest miner showed how an unusually long bushfire season that has scorched an area one-third the size of Germany is damaging the world’s No. 14 economy.

Australia’s tourism and insurance industries have already foreshadowed they face a A$1 billion ($687 million) hit each from the fires.

Sydney (AP) --- Australia’s forests are burning at a rate unmatched in modern times and scientists say the landscape is being permanently altered as a warming climate brings profound changes to the island continent.

Heat waves and drought have fueled bigger and more frequent fires in parts of Australia, so far this season torching some 40,000 square miles (104,000 square kilometers), an area about as big as Ohio.

Sydney (AP) --- Australia’s unprecedented wildfires season has so far charred 40,000 square miles (104,000 square kilometers) of brushland, rainforests, and national parks — killing by one estimate more than a billion wild animals. Scientists fear some of the island continent’s unique and colorful species may not recover. For others, they are trying to throw lifelines.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Specialist firefighters have saved the world’s last remaining wild stand of a prehistoric tree from wildfires that razed forests west of Sydney, officials said Thursday.

Firefighters winched from helicopters to reach the cluster of fewer than 200 Wollemi Pines in a remote gorge in the Blue Mountains a week before a massive wildlife bore down, National Parks and Wildlife Service Director David Crust said.

CANBERRA, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- An expert has called for a bushfire demarcation line to be established in South Australia to identify high-risk areas not suitable for human habitation.

Sukhbir Sandhu, an expert in sustainability from the University of South Australia (UniSA), recently said Australia should establish a "fire-line" similar to SA's existing Goyder Line of rainfall, which maps areas unsuitable for planting crops.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Fire alarms have been sounding in high-rise buildings across downtown Sydney and Melbourne as dense smoke from distant wildfires confuse electronic sensors. Modern government office blocks in the Australian capital Canberra have been closed because the air inside is too dangerous for civil servants to breathe.

The sun has glowed an eerie red behind a brown shrouded sky for weeks over Australian metropolitan areas that usually rank high in the world’s most livable cities indexes.