Fire breaks out in Sydney suburbs

Fire fighters have battled the Sydney blazes for more than eight days, but there is still no relief in sight

By Grant Holloway
CNN

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- A major bush fire has broken out in the heart of Sydney suburbia, threatening thousands of homes in the Pennant Hills area about 25 kilometers (16 miles) north west of the city center.

The fire has thrown up a wall of smoke which is clearly visible from CNN's office in North Sydney.

Fire services are throwing all available resources, including a water-bombing helicopter, at the fire which started in the Pennant Hills Park, a bushland reserve of about 400 hectares.

The park is surrounded on all sides by residential property, but the fire service has not as yet asked for the area to be evacuated.

Police have closed off roads into the area to deter sightseers who have been hampering the progress of emergency service crews.

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New South Wales Rural Fire Commissioner Phil Koperberg asked residents to begin taking precautions such as hosing down their roofs and gutters and closing windows.

Fire officials are saying this latest blaze appears to have been deliberately lit with no other apparent cause for the fire, which broke out around 2pm Sydney time.

Meanwhile the city of Sydney remains under intense threat from the fires as high temperatures and strong winds continue to fan the flames of about 80 blazes.

Fire services report most of those fires have now broken their containment lines, forcing the evacuation of residents in the Kurrajong Heights area in Sydney's north.

So far nearly 300,000 hectares (700,000 acres) of bushland in New South Wales, has been destroyed by the fires that began on Christmas Day but so far there has been no loss of life.

A total fire ban remains in force across all of New South Wales, Australia's most populous state, for the fourth consecutive day.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology also warned Tuesday that warm, dry and windy conditions were expected to cause very high to extreme fire danger in the Canberra region.

The bureau has specialist fire weather forecasters who are working closely with fire fighting services providing not only weather predictions, but also satellite pictures of the fires to help with mapping the blazes.

Australia's dry summers and vast tracts of combustible eucalyptus forest make bush fires a frequent event, but the expansion of city suburbs into native bush areas over the past few decades has increased the damaging impact of the infernos.

Australia's most deadly bush fires were on "Ash Wednesday" -- February 16, 1983 -- when 72 people died in fires that swept across the states of South Australia and Victoria.

The latest Sydney fires, many of which are suspected to be the work of arsonists, are the worst since 1994 when four people perished.

To date, the fires have destroyed more than 150 properties and caused more than $25 million damage.

Police have set up a task force to investigate the arson claims and have arrested six people in relation to the fires.

The maximum penalty for arson in Australia is 14 years imprisonment.