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Eight people have been killed by a fire burning on South Australia's lower Eyre Peninsula on Tuesday, with seven others reported missing.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio quoted South Australia's Chief Inspector Malcolm Schluter as saying that five people died in two separate cars in the Wanilla area, and another three were found on the Port Lincoln Highway.
The fire has burnt out 40,000 hectares since Monday afternoon and is being fanned by winds of up to 70 kilometers an hour.
The whole of the lower Eyre Peninsula has been cut-off by the blaze, which continues to burn out of control.
The fires are the worst to hit South Australia since February, 1983, when 28 South Australians were killed in the state's south-east. A further 47 people died in those fires in adjacent state of Victoria.
There are reports of loss of property in the townships of North Shields, Wanilla and Poonindie since Monday. Blazes are also threatening Edilillie, Wangary, Louth Bay and Tumby Bay, the Country Fire Service (CFS) said.
Townships were evacuated and holidaymakers at a caravan park at North Shields jumped into the ocean to save themselves from the flames.
"Some people had moved into the sea to escape the fire. Our people picked them up and brought them back to shore," CFS chief officer Euan Ferguson told reporters. He praised those who jumped into the sea, saying they may have become trapped if they'd tried to flee by road.
"One of the most dangerous areas to be in a bushfire is in a car on a road and it's a tragedy today that we've seen the consequences of people who again seem to have been caught in that situation," he said.
Wanilla resident Kaye Oats told local network Ten TV how she fled the fire that burnt her house.
"The wind just sprang up and back. .. and when I left, it (the fire) was surrounding our house. At the speed that it was coming, and the smoke, and you just had to move," she said.
Cabins and caravans at North Shields were destroyed in the fire, along with several farming properties in the area.
Firefighters had also been injured and taken to hospital, SA Police Commissioner Mal Hyde said.
Hundreds of CFS volunteers were mobilized, but windy conditions made firefighting all but impossible.
CFS chief officer Euan Ferguson said extreme conditions has made the blaze impossible to control.
"The reality is there is no force known to man which can extinguish fires when they get burning under these sorts of conditions," he said.
Meanwhile, a number of other bushfires are also reported in several parts of South Australia.
A fire at Mount Osmond, in the Adelaide Hills, near the state capital of Adelaide, burnt about 5,000 hectares, forcing the temporary closure of a freeway. Other fires in the state's southeast have been brought under control.
(Xinhua News Agency January 12, 2005)
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