Remarkably smoke can now be seen 12,000 kilometers away in Argentina and also in Chile.

Have a look at this image from Santiago, which has come in in the last few hours with smoke seen across the city.

Also, the World Wildlife Foundation is saying up to a 1,000,000,000 animals may have been killed directly or indirectly by the fires.

We also know almost 2000 homes have been destroyed and at least 24 people have died.

Among them the three volunteer firefighters is an image from the funeral of Andrew Road Y, who was killed in December.

And this is his little daughter being given her father's helmet and service medal at the ceremony.

And thousands of firefighters were involved in trying to can contain this vast crisis on while milder weather is helping their efforts of the moment.

Unfortunately, more hot, dry conditions will return soon, and still New South Wales in the southeast off Australia is the worst affected.

Let's begin in the southeast off the state.

The BBC's Jonathan Head is there now.

In the town of wind yellow, the fire service here has been unbelievably busy over the weekend trying to save this town.

The fire that struck this place roared in from back there.

The firefighters here put up an epic battle, one they describe in almost apocalyptic terms.

As this fire roared through with a massive cloud of ash, the sky completely red on the firefighters here described battling on all fronts to try to save the town is a town of around 400 people.

They thought they would lose the entire town.

The fire came up here.

It leapt over the road and you could see the ground over there is completely scorched going towards the railway line.

And that's where the firefighters say they stopped it.

They stopped it from going further over and getting more homes.

People have come back to this town now.

The weather's cooler.

There are fires some distance away.

It's still a bit smoky, but they were able to come back, look at their homes, and they described a feeling almost of elation, that nobody was hurt.

Nobody was killed and that they didn't lose more homes.

This is one off so many communities in Australia now that are reeling from these fires.

Andi assessing the damage that they've suffered worrying, of course, to that the hot season has only just started, and they may get Mawr fiery weather to come Well, not far from where Jonathan recorded.

That is another rural community called one Dandy in also in New South Wales.

The BBC's Lucy Hawkings is there.

Temperatures have been cooler here.

A little bit of rain has fallen across the state and Victoria, which has really taken the pressure off people.

But it does feel like world in the state of limbo, particularly the residents who live here because the intense heat and the wind is set to return here in the coming days.

And there is the constant constant smoke, an air pollution.

It's been really bad across the state, particularly in the capital, Australia, camper, where they gave out free masks to people today to try and cope with the pollution.

Ellen end in Melbourne as well.

Well, this is a human disaster.

It's an environmental disaster as well.

Here we have the World Wildlife Foundation estimating that more than one billion animals may have been killed directly or indirectly by these fires, and Lucy has been speaking with some of those involved in rescuing animals.

Hey, we have a baby mountain brush tailed possum.

So he's had to be evacuated as well.

With us, Um, he'll be released into the wild.

These guys were in care for a very long time.

We'll have him for close to a year, baby kangaroos and wombats there in care for about two years.

So it's a long time commit.

It's going to take decades and decades for the Bush to regenerate.

Probably you know, the impacts of fire beyond just what we see with the green truth leaves and all that.

So stuff.

This impacts the soil.

There's impacts to on the insects and all that stuff you just year after year, see less and less frogs.

You see less and less of those little species that can't candle big changes.

So, yeah, it's, you know, it's really scary.

Unfortunately, this crisis isn't going anywhere in the near future.

Here's the latest assessment from the bushfire Recovery Agency.

We have unaccounted for people across Australia, we have over 1800 homes have been destroyed.

That's before we even begin to count the cost off out houses of sheds of public places of schools.

The heartbeat off some of these communities is before we even begin to count the cost to business to those people who may not have lost their homes.

But they don't have a place to turn up for work today.

They're not sure how the next paycheck is going to arrive.

The cost of this is un presented.

I'm under no illusions about the size of the challenge that is ahead of us now.

Many different images have been used to show the scale of these fires, but we need to be careful about what we think we're looking at.

You may have seen this image is being very, very widely shared, with a lot of people claiming it's a satellite image.

It's definitely not.

It's a visualization that's based on NASA data from across the last month.

So where you see different parts of the country glowing?

That represents any area that's been affected by fire since December.

So it's a stark image, but it's definitely not a moment in time.

In fact, the artist who created this is called it a prettier looking graph, which is quite different.

It's also worth saying that These are not the deadliest fires in Australia's history, despite them being unprecedented in many ways.

If you go back to 2973 people died in the state of Victoria on that fire was brought under control within weeks.

These fires, already several months old and as we've been saying, they're likely to continue for several months more bear in mind.

The fire season has only just begun.

Now, as we discussed many times on outside source, these fires have become intensely political.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is accused by critics of not doing enough about the crisis or about climate change.

There's political heat going elsewhere to the Green Party is accused of failing to support hazard reduction burning.

This is where land, where there's a high density of particularly dry scrub referred to his fuel load, is deliberately burned to reduce risk.

Have a look at this quote from the prime minister, Scott Morrison, recently saying the most constant issue that's been raised with me has been the issue of managing fuel loads in national parks.

He went on to say that people who say they're seeking those actions on climate change don't share the same urgency of dealing with hazard reduction on.

We've heard these criticisms repeatedly.

His one example from YouTube off these points being made, particularly in the direction of the Green Party, just a show.

What, actually is the cause of all the big boys know climate change, just bad management from why up above in politicians, therefore the grains.

But here we have the Greens website.

The party says it supports hazard reduction, burning where appropriate, and it goes on to say on this is a quote from Scott Morrison.

But it goes on to say attempts by right wing pundits and politicians to place the blame on the greens represent the worst kind of dishonest politics.

And if you want an assessment off, whether the greens are getting in the way on this issue is the fire chief in the state of Victoria.

The reality is we've had fired and the landscape here that has as head Boone's go right through it, and it hasn't slowed it up.

It'll and so emotive argument is not supported that fuel reduction burning on a large scale will fix all our problems.

It should be treated as one part of an integrated approach.

What's been really successful for us in the firefight is how we actually working in with communities before the fires go through.

Part of that will be fuel reduction burning, but we can put flowers through weaken.

Do we can prepare communities before the fire goes through, which is actually giving us a lot more success than Theun.

Broad scale burning.

So yes, burning is important.

But some of the hysteria that this will be the the problem that solves the solution to all their problems is really just quite an emotional, A lot of rubbish, to be honest now, what some people are looking at, what caused these fires?

People have lost their homes of facing the question of how and whether it's rebuild.

And of course, they're desperate to know if their insurance will come through.

Here's the government's treasurer on the number of claims so far is around 8.5 1000 insurance claims totaling around $700 million in losses that have already been made.

Many people affected by these fires may not be fully covered by their insurance.

Here's Courtney Bembridge, Australian journalist based with the OS team on that issue.

It's always difficult in these areas that have been either burnt by five before or are fire prone insurance premiums.

There are often very, very high, and also you get a situation where many people are underinsured, so they may ensure the cost of building their house.

But at the time that goes up, and also the cost of construction after a fire is much higher than when your first building the home.

Sometimes also, if people have a mortgage, they'll have to.

The banks can kind of use the insurance payout to pay off the mortgage, and then you have to get another mortgage basically to rebuild.

So it's not as easy as people kind of getting them the amount and trying to rebuild often.

This takes months and years to kind of get people back on their feet after an event like this, and often their out of pocket to the chain of hundreds thousands of dollars.

So that, perhaps, is one of the reasons we're seeing lots of calls for donations to help Australians.

But some viewers might be thinking Australia is a relatively wealthy country.

Why does it need donations from overseas to help take on this crisis.

Is it just about insurance?

No.

So a lot of it is about caring for these people who are displaced Now.

Some people haven't lost their homes yet, but they're waiting to see what happens with the fire or their homes are in the path of the fire.

So they have been taken to evacuation centres.

They need to be fed.

They need water, they need food.

All of that is run by volunteer organizations, Not to mention the fact that these fires are actually being fort by mostly volunteers.

Those people need to be fed.

They need to have water and they need resources.

So all of that is funded by volunteer organizations the Red Cross.

Then you've also got wildlife.

An unprecedented number of animals have been affected by this, and so alot of those organizations are going in and getting rescuing animals.

Some of those take years to rehabilitate because of the state of their burns.

And so that takes a very long time to kind of get them back in their feet.

The first port of call obviously is just fighting this fire.

And because that is a volunteer organization, they'll be focusing on that.

But there are a wide range of courses as this thing stretches out for months and years that will still need ongoing support, and that's where the dollars are going.