Death Toll in Australian Bushfires Climbs to 84 [NYT]
By MERAIAH FOLEY
SYDNEY — John Ryan watched in horror as the sky above his farm in southern Australia turned from blue to black. Ten minutes later, the forest around his house was engulfed in flames.
He and a neighbor huddled inside his house while the worst of the blaze passed overhead. Then Mr. Ryan ran outside and began hosing down scores of tiny ember fires that had started in the gutters, on the roof and all around his mountain homestead.
Mr. Ryan’s home was spared, but his neighbor was not so fortunate.
“It burned everything as far as you can see,” Mr. Ryan told a radio station as he surveyed the damage to his neighbor’s home in Glenburn, 60 miles northeast of Melbourne. “There’s nothing left; dead animals everywhere.”
Victoria state police said that at least 84 people were killed in a series of wildfires that tore across the southern state of Victoria on Saturday, the country’s deadliest firestorm ever. Some died trying to escape the fires in their cars; others were caught up trying to protect their homes.
The death toll from the fires was the worst since the “Ash Wednesday” fires of 1983, when 75 people were killed and hundreds of homes destroyed across southern Australia.
More than 700 houses were razed and two townships were almost completely leveled in the disaster. Police said there were at least two children among the dead, and warned that the death toll could rise as emergency crews searched for bodies in the hardest hit towns.
More than 80 people were hospitalized across the fire zone. The victims included at least 20 burn patients, some of whom were unlikely to survive, hospital officials told reporters.
The fires were driven by hot winds of more than 62 miles per hour, and temperatures that peaked at 117 degrees in Melbourne, making Saturday the city’s hottest day on record.
Witnesses described seeing trees and houses explode into flames as ash and soot rained from amber skies. Many, like Mr. Ryan, were stranded at their properties, with no firefighters in sight and no time to escape the inferno.
“You couldn’t see anything, you couldn’t do anything and you couldn’t get out,” Mr. Ryan said. “You just have to hope that the house wouldn’t burn down.”
At Kinglake, where at least 18 people died and most of the town’s homes were destroyed, police said they found the charred bodies of several victims in cars littered along the highway. Six people were found dead in one car, according to media reports.
The residents of nearby Marysville, an alpine village of about 600 people, were counting their losses and considering their futures on Sunday after the fire destroyed nearly every home and business in town. Aerial images showed rows of buildings reduced to piles of tangled rubble along neat streets lined with scorched trees.
Around 30 residents who had not evacuated before Saturday spent the night huddled on a grassy field near town while the blaze engulfed Marysville, according to media reports. Two bodies were discovered in the town on Sunday, and emergency crews continued to search through the wreckage.
Around 3,000 career and volunteer firefighters were battling against a dozen large wildfires that had burned more than 770 square miles of forest and farmland. Authorities said they suspected that at least some of the fires had been lit by arsonists.
“Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria,” Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters after meeting with emergency relief workers in Melbourne. “This is an appalling tragedy.”
The government set up a 10 million Australian dollar ($6.5 million) relief fund, including an immediate payment of 1,000 dollars ($650) to victims of the blaze. Mr. Rudd also deployed the country’s army to the region to help fight the fires and provide emergency help.
Choking back tears, John Brumby, the Victoria state premier, warned residents to prepare for more casualties and property damage as the fires continued to burn across the state.
Fires are common during Australia’s hot, dry summers, when the oil-rich eucalyptus forests become especially vulnerable during lightening strikes or sparks thrown from farm equipment. But a prolonged drought and the weekend’s searing temperatures made recent conditions particularly bad. |
