Australian wildfire danger causes fire ban in Sydney and closes schools

SYDNEY (AP) — Sydney has experienced its first total fire ban in almost three years and several schools along the New South Wales state coast to the south have been closed because of a heightened wildfire danger caused by unusually hot and dry conditions across southeast Australia. Authorities have forecast the most destructive wildfire season during the approaching Southern Hemisphere summer in Australia’s populous southeast since the catastrophic Black Summer fires of 2019-2020. A total fire ban was declared on Tuesday for the Greater Sydney area and the coastal communities to the south, the first such for Sydney since late November 2020. Sydney matched its September maximum temperature record of 34.6 degrees Celsius (94.3 degrees Fahrenheit ) on Tuesday.