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Fires threaten to spoil the party
 Firefighters battle one of the many blazes burning across Australia. RELATEDYOUR E-MAIL ALERTSSYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Soaring mercury, strong gusty winds and no rain in sight -- it's bushfire season in Australia, and if the early signs are any indication, it's going to be another long, hot struggle. So far, 2006 has brought unrelenting hot, dry conditions to a large percentage of the country already suffering from years of drought. New Year's Day in Sydney was the hottest on record -- a stifling 46 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Fahrenheit) in many areas -- sparking fires in a coastal region just to the north of Australia's largest city. Dry summers and vast tracts of combustible eucalyptus forest make bushfires a frequent event in much of Australia, but the expansion of city suburbs into native bush areas over the past few decades has increased the damaging impact of the infernos. Sydney, a city of 4 million people, has extensive bushland areas fringing the city and punctuating deep into suburban areas, often to within just a few kilometers of the central business district. Similar conditions exists in other towns and cities across Australia. Many regions are now on high alert and are enforcing total fire bans, in a bid to avoid the disasters of the past. In 1994, bushfires in New South Wales state burned out of control for 13 days, killing four people, while in 1968 a series of blazes, which burned intermittently for four weeks, caused 14 deaths. More recently, fires rampaged through the nation's capital Canberra three years ago. The infernos struck in Canberra's leafy suburbs fueled by high winds, causing massive destruction. Four lives were lost, more than 500 homes were destroyed and thousands of hectares of land were lost. But none of these seasons compared with the devastation wrought during the Ash Wednesday fires of February 1983 which swept through the states of Victoria and South Australia. Those fires killed 76 people and destroyed around 3,000 homes. More than one million hectares of land were burnt out. As the nation's day of celebration -- Australia Day -- approaches on January 26, the weather forecasts are ominous. Many regions are predicted to have extremely hot, dry and dangerously windy conditions. Not for the first time in this sunburnt country the festivities are overshadowed by the threat of nature wreaking havoc. CNN intern Samantha Broun contributed to this report 
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