KI fires still going

Fires continue to burn on KI more than a week after their ignition by lightning. Of most concern at this time is the Flinders Chase fire, although 2 of the 3 other fires were reported as burning today as well. Today proved to be another dangerous fire day, with 'very high' fire danger ratings, approaching extreme, on the island. High to very high fire weather conditions are expected tomorrow as well, before a change moves through in the afternoon.

The image shows the so-called 721 false colour imagery from the MODIS instrument on board the Terra satellite, extracted from the MODIS Rapid Response Australia5 subset. It was acquired at 0105 UTC, about 1135 local time. The image is quite striking. The burnt area in Flinders Chase is quite large, with open flames quite prominent on the southern flank. The light blue color is the thick low-level smoke plume moving off toward the south. Compare with the similar image, from the early days of the fire, to see how it has evolved over time.

The Earth Observatory Natural Hazards site also posted a true colour image of the fires from the 12 December which shows a large smoke plume trailing off to the west.

From this 0645 CFS update

Due to the significance of these fires and the deployment of considerable South Australian resources, incident management personnel and firefighters have been drafted from Victoria, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia and are providing great support to SA crews.

Progress on building control lines ahead of expected deteriorating weather conditions today and tomorrow has continued although several outbreaks in the Flinders Chase fire have caused some concern.

Flinders Chase fire Back burning continued overnight in several locations however some control lines were breached with crews working hard to establish control lines this morning. Area burnt 21,760 ha

Western River (Solly) fire The fire was patrolled continually over night.
Area burnt 3,050 ha

D'Estrees Bay fire There were some flare-ups on the southern boundary. Area burnt 10,924 ha.

Central Fire (Vivonne Bay) Area burnt 5,594 ha.