An explosive wildfire is tearing through tinder-dry forest forcing thousands to flee.

The federal government is expanding Defence force support for Australia's coronavirus-stricken aged care sector.

More than 200 extra military medical personnel will be deployed to aged care homes in coming weeks, Defence Minister Richard Marles has announced.

The move came after aged care providers and trade unions requested Defence force support for the sector be extended beyond the August 12 end date.

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Currently there are 24 ADF personnel providing supporting staff in Australian aged care homes but in the coming weeks that number will be extended to 220.

The sector is currently experiencing COVID-19 infection rates similar to the February peak.

In the nation's aged care homes there are 6000 residents and close to 3500 staff who have contracted the virus.

The ADF medics will be deployed to late September, after a meeting between federal health and defence officials overnight.

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The coronavirus crisis in the sector is so bad that Federal Aged Care Minister Annika Wells, who is also the sports minister, has decided she cannot attend the Commonwealth Games in England.

"It's a decision I haven't taken couldn't leave the country with lightly," she told 9News

"In all conscience I couldn't leave the country with aged-care facing the current winter wave."

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It means no federal minister will be representing Australia at the Games which start on Thursday in Birmingham.

But the chair of the Australia Sports Commission, Kieran Perkins, will be there.

The announcement of further ADF support comes as a coronial inquest into the Newmarch House aged care COVID-19 outbreak in Sydney where 19 people died begins today.

Meanwhile, Nine newspapers are reporting some intensive care unit (ICU) patients in Victoria are being sent home instead of being kept in general wards because of the strain on the state's health system.

While highly unusual, this has occurred in recent weeks at the the Footscray and Sunshine hospitals, health authorities said.

A nine-year-old US boy who was camping at an Iowa state park with his parents and six-year-old sister survived a shooting that killed the rest of his family.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety identified the victims as Tyler Schmidt, 42; his 42-year-old wife, Sarah Schmidt; and their daughter, Lula Schmidt, all of Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Their bodies were found in their tent early Friday at the Maquoketa Caves State Park Campground, about 290 kilometres east of Des Moines.

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Authorities said the suspected gunman, 23-year-old Anthony Sherwin, was found dead on Friday in a wooded area of the park with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of the Department of Public Safety’s division of criminal investigation, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the motive for the attack was still unknown.

“We don’t know what led up to this, what precipitated it,” he said, adding that so far, “the investigation has not revealed any early interaction between the Schmidt family and him.”

Adam Morehouse, Sarah Schmidt's brother, said the family had no connection to Sherwin and he believed it was a “completely random act.”

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Cedar Falls Mayor Rob Green, who said he is a neighboor of the Schmidts, posted on Facebook on Friday that the couple's nine-year-old son, Arlo, “survived the attack, and is safe.”

The post did not say whether Arlo was in the tent or even at the campsite when the shootings happened, and the mayor told the AP he didn't have those details.

Morehouse confirmed Arlo was on the family's camping trip, but said he did not know exactly where the boy was at the time of the shooting or know specifics about how it unfolded.

“He is with family and he is OK, but I have not had any interaction with him,” Morehouse said Saturday.

“As far as I know, he was uninjured physically.”

By Saturday evening, more than $108,000 had flowed into a crowdfunding campaign created for Arlo.

The page, organised by a cousin, Beth Shapiro, said: “Arlo is a strong boy, surrounded by family and friends who are supporting him as best we can.”

The page says the fund will help Arlo now, and help fund his future education.

The killings prompted the evacuation of the park and campground, including a children's summer camp. After the evacuations, Sherwin was the only person unaccounted for, Mortvedt said.

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He said that during the course of the investigation, authorities learned Sherwin was armed and “that of course heightened our awareness.” Iowa allows people with permits to carry firearms virtually anywhere in the state. Officials did not say if Sherwin had a permit and provided no information about the firearm used to kill the Schmidts.

The Des Moines Register reported that Sherwin was from La Vista, Nebraska. La Vista Police Chief Bob Lausten told the newspaper that Sherwin lived in an apartment complex with his parents and had no history of criminal conduct.

Felicia Coe, 35, of Des Moines, was at the campground Friday morning with her boyfriend and his two sons, ages 11 and 16. She said the 16-year-old went out early to go running, and she was talking with someone at the park at about 6.30am when two park rangers dressed in helmets, vests and carrying what looked like automatic rifles told them to leave the campground.

More law enforcement and an ambulance showed up as Coe went to find her boyfriend's teenage son.

At the time, Coe did not know what happened. But she recalls seeing a little boy standing near the paramedics.

“He was in his pyjamas. I distinctly remember he had one blue tennis shoe,” she said. She later saw a picture of the Schmidt family online and said she recognised the boy she saw as Arlo.

“He’s got this really cute, floppy-curly, moppy, strawberry-blond hair that’s really distinguishable,” Coe said. “He was in these super cute little pyjamas, like a cotton T-shirt and shorts that matched. … He was just standing there. He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t distraught. But he also wasn’t being comforted. He was just standing there by himself.”

She said the campers got little information about what happened and she began piecing it together on the drive home.

“It’s hard to be so grateful that it wasn’t your family, when you know that another family, is just being ripped apart — multiple families," she said.

https://www.facebook.com/rgreencf/posts/pfbid032SCeePSJ8mrht9ykRCxvkeSFVxSz9SXcWXy6uVvv4ZVaY71Beu4YjrcijKJZEMrwl

Green, the Cedar Falls mayor, said Sarah Schmidt worked at the city's public library, which was closed Saturday.

“Like many of you just hearing the news, I’m devastated,” Green wrote on Facebook. “I knew Sarah well, and she & her family were regular walkers here in the Sartori Park neighbourhood. I was working with her this week on a public library tech presentation for 7/26.”

Morehouse said Tyler Schmidt's parents live in the Cedar Falls area, and Sarah Schmidt's family members are scattered around the country, but were heading to Iowa. He said Tyler and Sarah lived in Lawrence, Kansas, for a time, where Sarah worked at the University of Kansas. Tyler was an IT software engineer. At one point, he said, Sarah worked on a project about monarch butterflies, and the couple were huge Kansas Jayhawks fans.

In 2018, the Schmidts moved to Cedar Falls and had been active in the community ever since, Morehouse said. He said they loved the outdoors, and just got four pairs of snowshoes for Christmas.

“The best way to describe all four of them was the quintessential Midwestern family. They gave everybody everything they possibly could. They loved family … They enjoyed the outdoors, enjoyed the hiking — and this is just a question mark of ‘Why that campground and that campsite on that night?’"

A fast-moving brush fire near Yosemite National Park exploded in size on Saturday into one of California's largest wildfires of the year, prompting evacuation orders for thousands of people and shutting off power to more than 2000 homes and businesses.

The Oak Fire started on Friday afternoon southwest of the park near the town of Midpines in Mariposa County and by Saturday had grown to nearly 48 square kilometres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.

It erupted as firefighters made progress against an earlier blaze that burned to the edge of a grove of giant sequoias in the southernmost part of Yosemite Park.

Evacuation orders were put in effect on Saturday for over 6000 people living across an 11-kilometre span in the sparsely populated, rural area, said Daniel Patterson, a spokesman for the Sierra National Forest.

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Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency for Mariposa County on Saturday due to the effects of the Oak Fire.

More than 400 firefighters were battling the blaze, along with helicopters, other aircraft and bulldozers, facing tough conditions that included hot weather, low humidity and bone-dry vegetation caused by the worst drought in decades, Patterson said.

“Explosive fire behaviour is challenging firefighters,” Cal Fire said in a statement Saturday that described the Oak Fire's activity as “extreme with frequent runs, spot fires and group torching".

By Saturday morning, the fire had destroyed 10 residential and commercial structures, damaged five others and was threatening 2000 more structures, Cal Fire said.

The blaze prompted numerous road closures, including a shutdown of Highway 140 between Carstens Road and Allred Road – blocking one of the main routes into Yosemite.

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California has experienced increasingly larger and deadlier wildfires in recent years as climate change has made the West much warmer and drier over the past 30 years. Scientists have said weather will continue to be more extreme and wildfires more frequent, destructive and unpredictable.

“The fire is moving quickly. This fire was throwing embers out in front of itself for up to 2 miles (3 kilometres) yesterday,” Patterson said.

“These are exceptional fire conditions."

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

Pacific Gas & Electric said on its website that more than 2600 homes and businesses in the area had lost power as of Friday afternoon and there was no indication when it would be restored.

“PG&E is unable to access the affected equipment," the utility said.

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A shoeless older man attempting to flee the blaze on Friday crashed his sedan into a ditch in a closed area and was helped by firefighters.

He was safely driven from the area and did not appear to suffer any injuries. Several other residents stayed in their homes on Friday night as the fire burned nearby.

Meanwhile, firefighters have made significant progress against a wildfire that began in Yosemite National Park and burned into the Sierra National Forest.

The Washburn Fire was 79 per cent contained on Friday after burning about 19.4 square kilometres of forest. It was one of the largest fires of the year in California, along with the Lost Lake Fire in Riverside County that was fully contained in June at 23 square kilometres.

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The fire broke out on July 7 and forced the closure of the southern entrance to Yosemite and evacuation of the community of Wawona as it burned on the edge of Mariposa Grove, home to hundreds of giant sequoias, the world's largest trees by volume.

Wawona Road is tentatively set to reopen on Saturday, according to the park website.

A cruise ship carrying 2000 passengers has docked in Brisbane on Sunday following a chaotic 14 days at sea.

The Coral Princess which was scheduled to dock on Friday morning but was unable to due to wild weather.

The cruise had its fair share of inconveniences, after 150 people on board tested positive to COVID-19 and were forced to isolate in their rooms last week.

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On Sunday, passengers were excited to get off the ship but overall remained positive about their experience.

"We are happy to be off the wild seas," one passenger said.

"It was a good time, we were looked after, we always are," another person said.

Despite the chaos, this has done little to deter confidence ahead of the upcoming cruise season.

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The Coral Princess is the only cruise ship using the Port of Brisbane this month, but by November, there will be seven ships coming and going.

In December, there will be two additional ships.

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Thousands of nursing and midwifery students will soon be deployed to hospitals across Melbourne and regional Victoria as COVID-19 hospitalisations continue to grow.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the announcement was a "significant boost" to support all healthcare workers.

Under the supervision of a registered nurse or midwife, the second and third-year students will help with showering, feeding and transferring patients.

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Over time, Andrews said the students would take on more complex tasks, such as monitoring vital signs, testing blood glucose levels and dressing minor wounds.

Almost 30 hospitals will benefit from the program, some include; Grampians Health Ballarat, Austin Health, Royal Children's Hospital and Bendigo Health.

Andrews said the program has already deployed 3000 students to hospitals across the state.

He said the program had received "overwhelmingly positive feedback" from health services, students and universities.

"It's invaluable experience and it's an extra pair of highly skilled and motivated hands to help each and every one of our existing workforce," Andrews said.

On Sunday, Victoria recorded another 9501 new cases of COVID-19, taking the state's active case total to 71,392.

There are now 849 people in hospital with the virus, of those 27 are in ICU and seven are on a ventilator.

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