Fire Fears Spread to Victoria State, Australia

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Bush fires eased in Australia's capital Canberra with the onset of cool weather Wednesday, but new blazes destroyed four homes in Victoria state.

Victoria's Country Fire Authority said extra crews were coming from across the state to relieve weary firefighters and help fight the blazes some 210 miles from Canberra.

There were no reports of any major injuries among residents unlike the devastating fires over the weekend in Canberra that killed four people and razed 419 homes in one of Australia's worst-ever natural disasters.

``This is scary stuff,'' Rees said of the Victoria fires. ``The fires ... are clearly fast-running fires, they have gone through grassland into scrub, into plantation, forest, box-iron bark country.''

Strong winds relented Tuesday in Canberra, a city of 320,000, and more than 400 firefighters kept flames at bay a few miles from the capital's outskirts.

``The northern Canberra suburbs will be spared the impact of fire, and certainly with the advent of better conditions over the next three days those fires will be rounded up,'' said fire official Phil Koperberg.

Police said Wednesday that a 15-year-old boy had been charged with arson after he was allegedly caught lighting fires on Canberra's Black Mountain. Police and residents put out the fires before any damage was done.

Elsewhere, five houses were destroyed by fires in the southern island state of Tasmania.

Damage from Saturday's fire storm was expected to run into hundreds of millions of dollars. Schools, medical centers and thousands of acres of pine forests were destroyed.

Anger over who was to blame for the destruction grew, and the government ordered an inquiry into the situation.

A deputy captain of firefighters, Peter Holding, said the leadership had been disorganized. ``There was no field command, there were no group captains there that knew the area, that were telling us where to go and what to do,'' he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Canberra's city fire brigade union complained that members had been locked out of planning meetings.

``The Canberra community are entitled to be outraged by the handling of Saturday's fire storm,'' said union representative Mike Corcoran.

Angry residents who lost homes in Saturday's inferno claimed they had received conflicting advice, got no assistance from firefighters and had to battle towering walls of flames with buckets and garden hoses.