More than 550 volunteers backed by 10 water-bombing aircraft on Saturday appeared to have saved an Australian tourist town from a fire that cost one woman her life, destroyed four homes and burned through 100,000 hectares of forest, authorities said, according to dpa. Victoria fire chief Craig Lapsley said cooler weather meant the crisis was over and that residents around Halls Gap would soon be let back into their homes. The fire started Wednesday in the Grampians region of Victoria, 250 kilometres west of state capital Melbourne. It drove more than 500 people from the region into evacuation centres. Emergency warnings were cancelled. There were 34 fires burning in the state, 12 of them believed to be lit by arsonists and the remainder by lightning strikes, the Country Fire Authority reported. Lapsley warned that property loss from the Grampians fire could rise as police and firefighters moved into the parts where the blazes had passed through.
