Mass evacuation in Australia: Navy rescues trapped citizens

(Patria) - A Royal Australian Navy ship arrived at the town of Mallacoota in Victoria to evacuate residents trapped by bushfires, while the military prepares to rescue tens of thousands of people from other tourist towns on the east coast using helicopters and vessels.

The HMAS Choules is loaded with food, water and medical supplies and can evacuate a thousand people at once, a military spokesman said.

Five military helicopters and another navy vessel loaded with supplies and fuel have set off to evacuate residents of towns on the east coast surrounded by fires, Reuters reports.

Four thousand people are trapped in Mallacoota, a town in Victoria about 500 kilometres east of Melbourne, since they fled the flames seeking refuge on beaches. The town of a thousand residents is a popular tourist destination that attracts thousands of visitors in summer.

It will take days, possibly weeks, to fully extinguish the fires and restore roads so people can leave Mallacoota by vehicle, said Steve Warrington, chief commander of the fire service. "The fire is literally burning across the road... Trees are falling and blocking roads," he told ABC network.

Aid will be distributed to residents and a priority list for the first evacuation will be prepared.

Earlier on Thursday, authorities in Victoria and New South Wales told tourists and visitors to leave the area as an extreme heatwave is expected to worsen existing fires over the coming weekend.

The fire service declared a "tourist leave zone" stretching 240 kilometres south from the resort town of Batemans Bay in New South Wales to the border with Victoria.

A new heatwave with temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius is expected to arrive on Saturday.

Petrol stations have run out of fuel, with long queues of vehicles waiting in the Batemans Bay area.

Supplies of food and water are running low in many coastal settlements cut off from the world by the fires, firefighters reported.

Strong winds accompanying the heatwave are expected to cause mega-fires in the Blue Mountains area west of Sydney.

Smoke on Thursday prompted many Canberra residents to wear masks even inside buildings.

The smoke level in Canberra currently makes the city the most polluted in the world. On Wednesday, air quality in Canberra was 20 times higher than the level considered hazardous.

Fires have been raging across southeastern Australia since October. More than 5.36 million hectares have been burned across the country and 1,400 homes destroyed.

The death toll is at least 17, according to the Australian Associated Press, with dozens more people listed as missing.