Army and Navy to join the bushfire fight as Victoria counts the cost

Royal Australian Navy ships will sail to the rescue of Victorian and NSW coastal towns engulfed by the bushfires that plunged both states into crisis on New Years Eve.

Evacuees at Mallacoota Wharf at 10.30am Tuesday. 

Thousands of holidaymakers remain trapped by fires in Victoria’s east on Tuesday, with no land route out of the fire zone expected to be open for days, as authorities continued to search for four people still missing in the huge blazes.

Air Force helicopters are expected to be first into action, after Prime Minister Scott Morrison agreed to the states’ requests for help, with the choppers to drop supplies to towns isolated by the smoke and flames, and with fixed-wing aircraft expected to join the firefighting battle soon after.

Mallacoota, in Victoria’s far south-east, and Corryong, in the north-east, were both saved on Tuesday afternoon by changes of wind direction but with “numerous” homes lost on the outskirts of both communities.

Read the story from The Age - “Army and Navy to join the bushfire fight as Victoria counts the cost.”