INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image:Queensland is battling more than 100 fires across the stateThe first ever "catastrophic" bushfire warning in Queensland, Australia,
prompted a large-scale evacuation on Wednesday
The main town under threat was spared, but the intensity of fire conditions has caused concern.As the sky blackened and her horses whinnied
in the smoke, Fayleen Zemlicoff debated the "very last minute" she could remain at home.Ferocious winds were flicking embers from a bushfire
The smoke was so intense it was "like a volcano had gone off", she said.But she and her adult daughter, Anja, were trying frantically to
load the horses into a vehicle
Unsettled, the animals were resisting.Ultimately the pair, along with three elderly relatives, made a choice to leave
Image copyrightFAYLEEN ZEMLICOFFImage caption
Fayleen Zemlicoff, pictured with daughter Anja
Ms
Zemlicoff put her phone number on slips of paper, and tied them to the horses' manes."To drive away and not know what we would come home to,
whether the animals would survive it was a heartbreaking decision," she told the TheIndianSubcontinent
Fortunately, all of the horses survived.The family were among as many as 8,000 locals who evacuated from the Queensland town of Gracemere
late on Wednesday, after receiving an evacuation order."This fire was just something that's never happened to us before," Ms Zemlicoff
"But we are in drought, and everything around us is dry, dry, dry."Lance Jones, a farmer, said he had never witnessed such panic in the town
in his 30 years living there.Three years ago, Gracemere was among the towns battered by a powerful cyclone which left widespread damage
But Mr Jones said that natural disaster had not "scared us to the point of evacuation".'Not over yet'Ms Zemlicoff and her family stayed at a
motel in nearby Rockhampton, as fire crews battled through the night."We have saved the town of Gracemere," Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk
declared on Thursday morning.The success has been attributed, in large part, to the efforts of firefighters and computer modelling of the
blaze's path.The threat to Queensland was not over, however, the premier said
More than 100 fires remained burning across Queensland on Thursday, fuelled by strong winds, a heatwave and a long dry spell
Authorities have called the conditions "unprecedented" in Queensland.The evacuation of Gracemere was the first time a "catastrophic" fire
warning - the highest level - had been issued in the state."What we experienced yesterday was off the charts," Ms Palaszczuk said."Nobody
has recorded these conditions any time in the history of Queensland
And we are still not out of the woods."Why is this unusualUnlike in Australia's drier south, intense fire conditions are unusual in
central Queensland in late November - typically the start of the wet season
But existing ideas about threat periods are being challenged, experts say."There is always an amount of variability in fire seasons each
year, but research is showing that fire seasons are lengthening," said Dr Richard Thornton, the chief executive of the Bushfire and Natural
Hazard Cooperative Research Centre."[It is] now to the extent that we are now seeing a year-round fire season in Australia."Image
copyrightGRACEMERE POLICEImage caption
Thousands evacuated their homes in Gracemere on Wednesday
Dr
Samantha Lloyd, manager of the South East Queensland Fire and Biodiversity Consortium, said central Queensland had experienced fires "around
this time" previously.But what's concerning, she said, was that "we just don't generally see this intensity of fire weather".Dr Lloyd
noted that climate change modelling had pointed to increasingly frequent and severe weather events."We usually only have one to two extreme
fire days in a year, and now we've had something like three to four in just a few days," she said
