MELBOURNE, Australia — Four people have been charged with unlawfully lighting a campfire that the authorities said sparked huge blazes on Fraser Island off the northeastern coast of Australia in October, ultimately razing more than 210,000 acres of the popular vacation spot.
A joint investigation between the local police and park rangers found that the men, aged between 21 and 24, lit an illegal fire at a campsite on Oct. 14. The authorities said that the fire then spread in a northwesterly direction, ravaging native vegetation and blackening more than half of the island, much of which is a national
