Australia marks quietest fire season in a decade

MELBOURNE: Australia's most populous state has closed out its quietest fire season in a decade, its fire service said, as the coolest and wettest summer in years offered a reprieve from the uncontrolled blazes that torched large swathes of the country the year before.

The current bushfire season has seen half the number of callouts in New South Wales state, at 5,500, as the previous season, the NSW Rural Fire Service said on Wednesday, and burned 31,000 hectares compared to 5.5 million hectares razed across the state during last season's Black Summer wildfires. The less hazardous fire conditions were underpinned by a La Nina weather pattern, which saw Australia registering its wettest weather in four years and its coolest in nine though it also had the downside of causing massive floods in parts of the country's east coast.