Brief cooler weather promised as bush fires rage through three states

Even as firefighters were last night counting on a cool southerly change to help control more than 100 fires raging through New South Wales, weather forecasters have warned that the furnace will return later this week.

And the record November heatwave that has ignited vast tracts of NSW, Victoria and South Australia may be a harbinger of worse to come.

January and February are likely to be horror months scorched by 40C-plus temperatures and more strong, hot winds that will push fire danger ratings into the catastrophic levels seen in parts of the three eastern states over the past week.

Late yesterday these conditions were forcing firefighters to delay attempts at containing some outbreaks to focus instead on property.

Bushfire emergencies were declared for three towns in danger of being engulfed, and residents of other areas under threat were warned to be prepared to flee.

Backed by aircraft and bulldozers, more than 1000 firefighters had managed to successfully defend homes although some sheds and other buildings are believed to have been destroyed. There have been no estimates of stock losses, but flames have raced through thousands of hectares of farmland.

Relief was expected overnight as winds swung from north to south, with temperatures forecast to fall into the 20s and the possibility of some rain.

The earlier crises in SA and Victoria have been brought under control, and rain has fallen across both states - so heavy in Melbourne that the city ended its heatwave with flooding. Melbourne has been hit by 59.6mm of rain - more than the November average rainfall (57mm) in less than a day

But the Bureau of Meteorology said conditions were expected to deteriorate again during the week, pushing temperatures back into the 30s.

Late yesterday fires continued to threaten the towns of Rylstone and Kandos, near Mudgee to the northwest of Sydney. Bushfire emergencies were declared for both towns, and the nearby community of Clandilla.

Flames came within 20m of homes at Gunnedah, near Tamworth in northern NSW, and were causing concern for the township of Glen David, on the fringes of Woollami National park near Lithgow.

Serious outbreaks were also burning in the Blue Mountains, in the Hawkesbury area, near the north-ern towns of Narrabri and Glenn Innes, and the Laguna area, near Orange.

Late yesterday the line defending Rylstone was broken, causing fears that the fire could break into the town before the arrival of the southerly change.

At Gunnedah a fire believed to have been caused by falling power lines came within metres of houses but was contained.

The Kandos and Rylstone fires are part of a complex burning in the Woollami district and have threatened the towns for two days, at one stage jumping a dam.

At Rylstone, health authorities yesterday evacuated the local hospital and transferred high dependency patients to safer towns.

It's not just the treatment [of patients]," Linda Lynott of the Greater Western Area Health Service told ABC radio. "It's their medications, their notes, their charts - everything has to go."

People living in the path of fires have already been told to make an early decision to stay and fight, or leave. In Kandos, Bonnie Farrell had her car packed in case of flight.

"People are scared and I think the horrific winds at the moment make people more on edge," she told ABC radio.