Hell on earth: A body lies at the side of the road in Marysville as Australia is devastated by fire








Bushfire death toll 'to reach 230' as Australian PM brands arsonists 'mass murderers'

By Richard Shears

09th February 2009

• At least 700 homes destroyed; 5,000 people homeless
• Death toll at 170 and rising
  
• Royal commission launched to investigate arson
• Two people charged with arson in New South Wales
• Trauma centres run out of morphine
  

Australia faced the unbelievable today as the death toll from the nation's worst-ever bushfires soared to 170 and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd slammed the arsonists as 'mass murderers'.

A grim prediction by experts said the final death toll could be 230 as hundreds more homes are wiped out by towering walls of flames described as 'hell on earth'.

Mr Rudd choked back tears as he accused the arsonists of murder.

Inferno: A man gazes at the melted metal of alloy wheels from his burnt out vehicles after a bushfire swept through his property today. Many people in Victoria died in their cars as the fire overtook them

'Mass murderers': Australian PM Kevin Rudd, left, fights for his composure as he walks away from a press conference with Premier of Victoria, John Brumby yesterday

His deputy, Welsh-born Julia Gillard, also fought with her emotions as she told Parliament: 'The seventh of February, 2009, will now be remembered as one of the darkest days in Australia's peacetime history.'

She added that the flames which consumed families, children, pets and wildlife and wiped small towns off the face of the earth was 'a tragedy beyond belief, beyond precedent and really beyond words.'

'It will get worse and  Australians need to prepare themselves,' she added.

'Everybody's gone. Everybody's gone. Everybody. Their houses are gone. They're all dead in the houses there. Everybody's dead,' cried Christopher Harvey, a survivor from Kinglake where most people were killed, as he walked through the town.

Sources at emergency meetings in Victoria said that with so many burned-out houses and cars still to be reached by rescuers the toll was certain to rise dramatically.

Grief: Above and below, family members comfort one another after learning that their parents Bill and Faye Walker and disabled brother Geoffrey were among victims that died in the Marysville bushfire, north-east of Melbourne

The charred remains of home are glaringly white against the scorched earth near Melbourne

Reports that arsonists were returning to re-light blazes after fire crews had left an area only further sickened the grieving nation.

And it was towards these heartless 'firebugs' that Mr Rudd poured out his fury.
'There are no words to describe it other than mass murder,' he said.

Two people have already been charged with arson in New South Wales, the province neighbouring Victoria, which has suffered the brunt of the fires.

One of the two was a boy aged just 15. The other was a 31-year-old man who was denied bail.

With entire towns being declared as crime scenes, Victorian premier John Brumby announced a Royal commission will be held to investigate the arson allegations.

A Royal commission is among the highest-level investigations that can be called under Australian law. Usually, a former judge is appointed to take extensive evidence and make formal findings that can lead to charges or changes in the law.

Fires continue to break out around the state and many homes - and  families - remain under threat, leading to fears that there will be  new deaths, to add to the toll of those who have already lost their lives.












Hell on earth: A NASA satellite image released today, Monday, shows smoke streaming out over the ocean from fires (circled in red) in Victoria

One woman was forced to hide with her two children inside a wombat burrow as the worst of the fire passed. At least four children are reported dead so far.

Victoria's main trauma centre has already run out of morphine as staff battled to treat burn victims.

Search and rescue teams will begin to scour properties that could not be reached yesterday because of the intense heat, which has seen the interiors of cars in which people tried to flee literally melted.

'No-one in those vehicles stood a chance,' said a firefighter helping in the search of charred vehicles. 'The radiated heat inside would have been like a furnace.'

The fires, in wooded hills 30 miles to the north and east of Melbourne in the state of Victoria, left charred bodies, mangled cars and blackened remnants of family homes.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said: ‘Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria.’

A police spokesman said: ‘If we catch them, they will be charged with murder or manslaughter.’

Residents – many of them elderly or hardened outback farmers – were left with the agonising decision to flee or defiantly remain behind to defend their homes.

Firemen who ventured into the smouldering remains of small towns likened the scenes of destruction to a ‘holocaust’.

They said no one had seen the like of such fires before – not even those who had fought the ‘Ash Wednesday fires’ of 1983 which claimed 47 lives in the state.

This weekend’s fires were relentless, with six family members perishing in one car as they tried to escape a fierce blaze that chased them down the highway.

The town of Marysville, with about 500 residents, was said to have been burned to the ground.

And in Strathewen one resident told of ‘absolutely horrific’ scenes, adding: ‘The school’s gone, the hall’s gone. . .We’ve lost friends, and we’re just waiting for more – children, loved ones.’

Melbourne was shocked to hear of the death of respected newsreader Brian Naylor, whose sign-off on the six o’clock news had been:‘May your news be good news.

A dead kangaroo lies beside a burnt-out section of the Hume Highway near Seymour, some 100 kilometres north of Melbourne today

Ablaze: Fire on a mountainside in Strathewen, part of the King Lake National Park

The Queen today expressed her shock and sadness at the ‘terrible’ death toll and praised firefighters ‘making extraordinary efforts to contain the situation’.

She said: ‘I send my heartfelt condolences to the families of all those who have died and my deep sympathy to the many who have lost their homes in this disaster on so dreadful an occasion as this for Australia.’

And Gordon Brown telephoned his Australian counterpart Mr Rudd to offer sympathy and assistance.

Specialist identification teams – those who went to Bali to identify the dead after the 2002 bombing – were being used to identify bodies charred beyond recognition.

The remains of a house destroyed by the fires is seen in the town of Kinglake

The army was being called in with bulldozers and hoses to help exhausted firemen battle flames that were still raging into the night, despite a drop in temperatures.

Preparing for the worst, police and firemen began the grim task of sifting through the ruins of homes looking for further victims as witnesses told of the speed of the fires that swept across tree-lined regions all around the state while temperatures soared to 47C.

With no mercy for young and old, some scenes have been like living nightmares, epitomised by the sight of one badly-burned man staggering into a house where he had been staying, clutching his burned infant daughter in his arms.

He choked out the words that his wife and other child had died in the fire.

'He was so badly burned,' said Marie Jones, who was staying near the house at Kinglake. 'His little girl was burned, but not as badly as her dad.       

'He said: "I've lost my wife, I've lost my other kid - I just need you to save my daughter."'

Miss Jones told the Sydney Morning Herald that she travelled with the man and his daughter in an ambulance but later became separated from them.

Wall of flames: A fire truck moves away from out of control flames during a raging bushfire in the Bunyip Sate Forest

They sat, shocked and wide eyed in an evacuation centre in the nearby  town of Whittlesea...scores of survivors unable to fully contemplate the searing horror they had left behind in the town of Kinglake.

'There were a lot of families that couldn't get out - a lot of families that were trying to get out that couldn't,' said Cathy Barber, who has reported the death of one of her neighbours.

She escaped with her own life by huddling in her car in the middle of a sports field near Kinglake, just out of reach of the licking flames.

A line of destroyed houses outside Kinglake

And as she made her way to the evacuation centre she saw the devastating effect the fire had had on wildlife - blackened carcasses of kangaroos and other dead animals littering the road.

Officials admit there are children missing and babies unaccounted for. They knew there was a long night ahead - and another long and terrible day to follow.

One resident of Kinglake told of three members of the same family - a 14-year-old girl, a nine-year-old boy and an uncle - dying in a house  from which they could not escape. Several other children are believed to be among the victims.         

People who survived the blazes told of trees exploding in the heat and birds dropping dead from the sky as the towering flames licked at them.    

This haunting image shows the aftermath of a fire that destroyed equipment at a pine tree plantation north east of Melbourne

At a control centre in Melbourne, an official ticked off figures that  no-one had imagined several days ago, even though there had been warnings of severe temperatures and the danger of bushfires.         

The inferno was as tall as a four-storey building at one stage and was sparking spot fires 40 km (25 miles) ahead of itself as the strong winds blew hot embers in its path.

'It's going to look like Hiroshima, I tell you. It's going to look like a nuclear bomb. There are animals dead all over the road,' said Harvey.

More than 750 houses were destroyed and some 78 people, with serious burns and injuries, are in hospital.

Debris: The charred remains of houses destroyed by bushfires in the town of Heathcote Junction, 34 miles north of Melbourne

Inferno: Firefighters monitor a giant fire raging in the Bunyip State Park

Many patients had burns to more than 30 per cent of their bodies and some injuries were worse than the Bali bombings in 2002, said one doctor at a hospital emergency department.

As the counting went on and surgeons fought to save the lives of  those rushed to hospital with terrible burns, firefighters who bravely  overcame the heat as the fires moved on from Kinglake described scenes they had never witnessed in their careers.

Firefighter Richard Hoyle, who has had the job for eight years, said he had passed at least two dozen burned-out cars that had been involved in minor collisions as panic-stricken people had tried to race away from the flames.     

'The road leading into Kinglake is riddled with burned-out cars involved in minor collisions and with debris,' he said.

'Trees on the  side of the road that are still burning are just falling all over the road. There is really nothing left.'         

Scorched earth: Trees destroyed by fire stand among ash near Kinglake, Victoria

A volunteer firefighter, describing his frightening experiences on an internet blog, said he would probably never recover from what he had seen.

Referring to Saturday, when the blazes claimed virtually all of the lives, the fireman said: '7th February 2009 will go down in history for all the wrong reasons. I hope people are safe, especially  after what I have seen.'

Mrs Raylene Kincaide, from Narbethong, north east of Melbourne, has lost her home and she said there was little left of her small town. 

'Everyone we know has lost everything they had,' she said.        

An emergency vehicle races away from a blaze near a structure in the Gippsland region

Mrs Kincaide had lived through the Ash Wednesday fires of February 1983, when a total of 75 people died in Victoria and the state of  South Australia, but she said 'this is probably worse.'         

A sad story was relayed by Mrs Mary Avola who told Melbourne's Herald Sun that her husband of 43 years, Peter Avola, aged 67, had perished in the fire.         

'Our home was under threat and we agreed to flee in separate cars,'  she said.

'He was behind me in another car. He was behind me for a  while and we tried to reach the oval (sports ground) but the gates were locked.        

'He just told me to go - and that's the last time I saw him.'

This Nasa map of Australia with land surface temperatures from Jan 25 to Feb 1, 2009 compared to average mid-summer temperatures between 2000-2008. Warmer than average temperatures are red, near-normal are white, and cooler are blue

His body was found near his car on their property this morning. It is thought he tried to run from the vehicle across a field, fearing a gas cylinder in the boot would exploded.  

From small towns and village communities north and east of Melbourne came story after story of people missing, dramatic escapes through flames and homes being burned to the ground.

Schools have gone, government buildings have disappeared - there is nothing left in many places except the blackened stumps of what was once there.         

The approaching fires tricked many. They came from one direction, then swerved to another.

It was impossible to know which way to run. For some, the gamble paid off, for others, the running ended in flames.         

As Mrs Sue Aldred, a resident of the Kinglake area, said: 'I feared  for my life at one point - there was a horrible moment of indecision where I just thought 'I'm going to stay here and beat this flame back, but where do I hide? Which building do I hide in?'

'It was horrible.'