AlHijjah 19, 1434, Oct 24, 2013, SPA -- Half the 60 forest fires burning in south-eastern Australia were still raging out of control Thursday as the bushfire emergency entered its second week and claimed its second fatality, dpa reported. The mammoth blazes have destroyed 210 houses, burnt 126,000 hectares of woodland and tested a mostly volunteer force of 1,500 firefighters. Worst affected are the Blue Mountains, 70 kilometres west of Sydney, where soldiers training on a firing range inadvertently touched off a bushfire that has spread over 50,000 hectares and is still uncontained. A 43-year-old pilot was killed when his water-bombing aircraft went down while fighting a fire near Ulladulla, 225 kilometres south of Sydney. The Blue Mountains fires are the worst there since the 1960s. The 1984 fires in the south-east tore through 3.5 million hectares of bushland.
