Brisbane suffers under smoke haze as bushfires burn west of city

Bushfires in the Lockyer Valley west of Brisbane have sent a haze of dangerous smoke across the city after it sweltered in the hottest September day in years.

Air quality in the CBD, South Brisbane and Woolloongabba was on Monday morning rated “poor”, while in Cannon Hill to the east, the rating was “very poor”.

Queensland fire authorities issued a fire ban for Ipswich and the Lockyer Valley on Sunday as dozens of small fires burned across the state’s south-east.

A fast-moving grass fire burning near Plainland forced the closure of the Warrego Highway for several hours as a fire burned dangerously close to passing motorists.

Some residents were evacuated as a precaution.

“We are kind of trapped between two fires and really up to the mercy of the weather and which way the wind goes,” one woman told 9News.

“I feel for those estates and people out there doing it hard.”

Fire crews and water-bombing aircraft are still working to contain the blaze which is expected to burn for several days.

The early spring heat was just a taste of what is to come over the next few months, Steven Hadley from the Bureau of Meteorology said.

“We’ve seen temperatures around 35, 36 degrees, that’s the hottest we’ve seen in September since around 2019,” he said.

“The longer range forecast for spring indicates that on the whole, we’re going to have higher than average temperatures across the season through September, through October and November.”