FLEE or take shelter, this was the critical advice given by local officials for residents in Victoria on Tuesday as wind gusts of about 50 miles per hour were reported around East Gippsland, near eastern Melbourne.
Local officials earlier today issued evacuation orders for nine rural neighborhoods, saying the fires were “threatening homes and lives”.
Meanwhile, people from another seven neighborhoods who hadn’t left their homes yet were told to take shelter immediately because it was already too late to leave.
As per the state’s Country Fire Authority, about 650 firefighters were battling fires across 17,000 hectares of land within the past 24 hours.
Australian firefighters are preparing for another fierce bushfire season since the deadly “Black Summer” blazes of 2019-2020 which killed dozens of people and billions of animals.
