https://www.dailymercury.com.au/news/acting-prime-minister-visits-fire-ravaged-region/3591529/ AS WILD fires continued to threaten the region, Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack touched down in Mackay today to attend a briefing with emergency and crisis teams for an update on the situation. Meeting at the Mackay Local Disaster Coordination Centre, the situation was discussed with a host of crisis management authorities with reports that, while fires continued to rage, fighters were gaining more control of the natural disaster. Mr McCormack said 527,000 hectares of land had been destroyed throughout Queensland, and he praised the outstanding efforts of firefighters and volunteers battling the flames in the fire-tarnished regions. He said while the fires were beginning to be better contained, the weather's unpredictability had ensured crisis management will continue to monitor the situation stringently.
"We are still in the response phase of this fire fight and there are still many fires burning out of control, but in a reasonably contained way,” Mr McCormack said. "Some of them, whilst they're contained, they are still burning on different fronts - they're still burning on many fronts - but the fact is we're still all worried about the weather. "The winds have the potential to whip up at any stage so we need to watch and wait and see, and I pay credit to the crisis control centre here.” Mayor Greg Williamson spoke of fires at Eungella and said that activity in at the back hills of the region was being monitored in conjunction with the front-line fires within established containment lines. Mr Williamson expected weather conditions on Monday would be "just the same as we've experienced” in recent days and perhaps "even worse”. "We heard of some of the concerns at the back of Eungella... where depending on the weather conditions we could be faced with a similar attack on that community again but from the other side,” he said. ”I'm not saying it's going to happen, I'm saying we need to be aware of it and we have our eyes back in the skies today to try and track down those fires that we're alerted to.” Cr Williamson said while respondents were confident the fires were contained, as with all fires, they were not controlled and it was a matter of remaining vigilant as weather conditions threaten to become more severe. "The more severe the weather conditions become the less opportunity we have to be confident so it's just a matter of being vigilant,” he said. "Its happened every afternoon where the mornings been calm and it's been chaos in the afternoon. "We rely on the community feedback, we rely on our teams feedback on the ground, but we have as much a handle of it as we possibly can.”
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January 2020
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