© Reuters
A firefighter puts out a blaze during a week-long wildfire on New Zealand’s South Island.
A massive bushfire has churned through more than 5,600 acres on New Zealand's South Island in what is believed to be
the country's worst forest fire since 1955, BBC reports.
A state of emergency was declared on Feb. 6, two days after the Pigeon Valley Fire began near the city of Nelson. As of Monday, the blaze was
still scorching the island's arid countryside, but as firefighting conditions improved, around 3,000 evacuated residents were allowed to return home.
Local MP Nick Smith described the region as a "tinderbox" and said 70,000 residents in the fire's range remain "on edge."
Twenty-three
helicopters and two planes have reportedly been deployed to combat the blaze in the nation's
largest aerial firefight on record, according to the New Zealand
Herald.
Fire chiefs have
warned that the flames could continue until March.
The bushfire follows a heatwave that saw some areas of New Zealand sweating out 90°F days last month. The New Zealand Drought Index reports "extremely dry"
conditions in the Nelson area, which has reportedly been parched since November 2018.
Comment: There have been two other extremely rare records of this species in recent years (2015 and 2016) off the UK coast, see also: Another albatross species turns up in the wrong hemisphere, this time on Suffolk coast, UK
Lost black-browed albatross from the southern hemisphere seen along the coast of Yorkshire, UK