ELECTRICAL equipment led to a fatal wildfire which swept through Southern California last year and another, currently burning near Los Angeles (LA), utilities companies have said.
Thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes in the hills of LA, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, after the latest blaze.
The fire that broke out on Monday morning near the J. Paul Getty Museum was sparked after high winds blew a eucalyptus branch onto an electric line that caused it to bend, ignite dry grass and destroy a dozen homes, according to preliminary findings.
Meanwhile, Southern California Edison announced that it believes its equipment caused the deadly Woolsey fire last year northwest of Los Angeles that scorched grasslands and burned across the Santa Monica Mountains to the coast.
MEANWHILE, a Christian association is trying to prevent Brussels opera house La Monnaie from staging a production of Arthur Honegger’s oratorio Joan Of Arc At The Stake, in which the heroine appears dressed in men’s clothes and, at one point, naked. The Pro Europa Christiana Federation wants the show to be cancelled and has launched an online petition.
The association argues that the production is “obscene and hurting Christians”and the petition claims that “the symbolic character of Saint Joan of Arc is again the target of a pornographic representation.
La Monnaie director Peter de Caluwe was unimpressed and said the show will go ahead anyway.
ELSEWHERE, conservationists fear hundreds of koalas have died in wildfires that have razed prime habitat on Australia’s east coast.
Port Macquarie Koala Hospital president Sue Ashton said she hoped wildlife carers would be allowed to begin their search of the fire zone for survivors on Thursday.
The fire was started by a lightning strike on Friday in a forest in New South Wales state, 300 kilometres north of Sydney, and has since burnt 2000 hectares.
Two-thirds of that area was koala habitat, Ashton said.
“If we look at a 50% survival rate, that’s around about 350 koalas and that’s absolutely devastating,” she said of the death toll.
FINALLY, a zoo in western Poland is trying to save nine tigers from Italy that have been stranded for days in small cages at the border with Belarus. Another tiger in the group has already died.
Authorities in Belarus are refusing to let the transport in, saying the Italian caretakers have no visas and lack the necessary veterinary documents for the animals.
The shipment started on October 22 from near Rome for a recipient in Russia but got stuck on Saturday at Poland’s border with Belarus.
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