Australia gets slight fire reprieve

Australian firefighters took advantage of weekend rainfall and cooler weather on Tuesday to bolster their defenses against raging bushfires. But the rain was not heavy enough to extinguish the 130 fires burning across New South Wales. Rain also fell in Victoria, where Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville said it would take up to 8 inches of precipitation over a short time to put out the fires in that region.

What’s the economic toll of the crisis? The blazes have killed 25 people and destroyed 2,000 homes since September in one of the driest years on record. On Tuesday, the Insurance Council of Australia said insurance claims had reached $485 million. The government has set aside $1.4 billion toward the recovery effort, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday.

Dig deeper: Read Samantha Gobba’s report in The Sift on the effects of the bushfires.