Northwest Tas fires miss heavy rain

Heavy downpours across Tasmania have helped fire crews in the south but little rain in the northwest has failed to dampen a blaze near Arthur River.

Residents are being allowed to return to Tasmania's bushfire-ravaged northwest but there is a chance fires that threatened the Arthur River area could flare again.

Tasmania Fire Service chief Gavin Freeman says recent heavy rain has helped crews battling major blazes, with the threat from a fire at Nunamara reduced to the point it's been handed back to local fire controllers.

Crews have made good progress containing a fire near Strathgordon, in the state's southwest.

While heavy rain has caused flash flooding in parts of Tasmania, areas where fires are burning in the northwest have received less than 10mm of rain.

The Arthur River fire, while quieter, may present problems in coming days.

"We were able make that fairly safe and we're opening that back up to allow residents that did relocate to go back in ... but there's still quite a significant amount of uncontained fire edge out on the east coast," Mr Freeman told reporters on Saturday.

"We're working very hard to wrap that up and contain it but I can't promise those fires won't move around, so anybody that lives in areas pretty close to those fires needs to remain fairly vigilant.

"We haven't had a lot of activity today but that doesn't mean it won't move tomorrow or the next day."

Fire danger is likely to be high or very high across the state by Tuesday.

There are still 80 separate fires burning in Tasmania, some sparked by lightning strikes during severe thunderstorms.

But heavy rain that has caused flash flooding in some areas has eased fire intensity.

By late Saturday, only four blazes - at Lake Mackenzie, Cradle Valley and Pelion, at Lorinna and near Strathgordon - were at advice level.

Poor visibility will prevent an infra-red-equipped aircraft to check for hot spots around the Lake Mackenzie fire until Sunday, Mr Freeman said.


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Source: AAP



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