Posted by on December 20, 2019 9:00 am
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Categories: µ Newsjones

The death toll from the unprecedented crisis has reached eight and sparked an apology from the prime minister

Even by the standards of 2019, with an Australian public increasingly conditioned to the threat of unprecedented bushfires and and warnings of record-breaking heat, this has been a week unlike those before it.

On Friday, firefighters were battling more than 200 fires across five states as a heatwave engulfing the country pushed temperatures in the south into the mid-40s, and Sydney and other centres were enveloped in a smoke that health professionals warned had been at hazardous levels for nearly a month. Strong winds pushed the smoke 900km south, where it also blanketing Melbourne.

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