More than half of the koalas living on a coastal reserve have been killed as parts of Australia are destroyed by a record number of intense bushfires.

About 350 of the 500 to 600 koalas on the reserve in the New South Wales coast town of Port Macquarie have died in the bushfires, according to Koala Conservation Australia.

Thousands of people were forced to flee their homes on Friday when 17 fires were burning at emergency levels and more than 50 smaller blazes were also burning out of control, officials said.

By Saturday morning Australian time, 12 were burning at emergency levels across the state, the Sydney Morning Herald said.

More than 1,000 firefighters and 70 aircraft have been deployed to battle the blazes, but strong winds and erratic fire behaviour are hampering their efforts, ABC said.

New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSWRFS) commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said: “We are in uncharted territory … we’ve never seen this many fires concurrently at emergency warning level.

“It is a very volatile and very dangerous set of circumstances that we are experiencing right across these fire grounds in New South Wales.”

Homes and buildings have been destroyed on the state’s mid north coast, NSWRFS said, while admitting “the exact number won’t be known for some time”.

There are reports of property damage, and minor injuries to both firefighters and members of the general public, officials said.

The sky over Port Macquarie turned red, according to posts on social media.

In Queensland, where emergencies had been declared for three fires early on Friday evening, around 6,500 people in several towns including Cooroibah and Tewantin, were told to leave by the state’s fire and emergency services.

More than 50 fires in all were burning in the state to the north of New South Wales.

People living in parts of the Sunshine Coast and further inland were told to leave their homes as the danger spread towards suburban Brisbane with a number of homes there under threat on Friday afternoon.

This is one of Australia’s worst bushfire seasons with a record number of emergency warnings and firefighters battling dozens of fires.

Animal carers at the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital, where injured koalas are being nursed, believe it will take at least 10 days to assess the full damage to the koala population.

The Australian native species, whose numbers are estimated at anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000, could be extinct by mid-century due to the double threat from fires and climate change, James Tremain of the Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales said.

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