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Death toll in Australian wildfires rises past 170
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-10 08:57 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was visibly upset during a TV interview and reflected disgust that arsonists may be to blame. "What do you say about anyone like that?" Rudd said. "There's no words to describe it, other than it's mass murder." Attorney General Robert McClelland said anyone found to have deliberately set fires could face murder charges. Victoria Police Commissioner Christine Nixon said investigators had strong suspicions that one of the deadly blazes - known as the Churchill fire after a ruined town - was arson, and it could not be ruled out for others. Arson is not uncommon in Australian wildfires. Of the estimated 60,000 fires in forests and other vegetation each year, about half are deliberately lit or are suspicious, the government-funded Institute of Criminology said earlier this month. In New South Wales State on Monday, a 31-year-old man appeared in court charged with arson in connection with a weekend wildfire north of Sydney. No loss of life was reported there, and he faces up to 10 years in prison. At relief centers, survivors wept and embraced as they reunited with neighbors and looked for loved ones. An impromptu message board at Whittlesea Community Center displayed yellow sticky notes. "Lisa, call me. We are worried about you," one read. "Rob, Tash, Jorja and Leslie, Where are you? Call mom and dad," read another. Many survivors said the speed of the fires caught them off guard and even those who had planned to evacuate found themselves forced to outrun flames sooner than expected. At Kinglake, a body covered by a white sheet lay in a yard where every tree and blade of grass was blackened. The burned-out hulks of four cars were clustered together haphazardly after an apparent collision. "What we've seen, I think, is that people didn't have enough time, in some cases," Nixon said. "We're finding (bodies) on the side of roads, in cars that crashed." Police sealed off Maryville, a town destroyed by another fire, and told returning residents and reporters they could not enter because bodies were still in the streets. Donna Bateman, whose home in Kinglake West burned to the ground with her pets inside, said firefighters barely had a chance. "Everyone has a fire plan. People prepare for this for months," she said. "But the fire service told me that a fire that usually takes a day to travel had traveled three-quarters of a mile in an hour to my property. Now everything is gone." Officials said both the tolls of human life and property would almost certainly rise as they reached deeper into the disaster zone. Victoria state Premier John Brumby said a commission would examine all aspects of the fires, including warning and evacuation policies that allow people to stay to protect their homes. Some former police officials dismissed the idea of forced evacuations, noting the ferocity of the weekend fires seemed to preclude such an option. "I think our policy has served us well in what I'd call normal conditions, but what we saw at the weekend were just not normal conditions," Brumby told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television. "We prepared, I guess, for a high tide, a king tide even, but what ran over the state was more like a tsunami."
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