http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/world/asia/09australia.html?_r=1&hp

Death Toll in Australian Fires Climbs to 128
By MERAIAH FOLEY

SYDNEY, Australia — A series of wildfires that tore across the southern state of Victoria over the weekend killed at least 128 people, the state police said Monday, making it the country’s deadliest firestorm.
Two entire towns were destroyed and at least 750 homes were leveled, along with more than 770 square miles of forest and farmland. Hot winds of more than 62 miles per hour and temperatures that peaked at 117 degrees in Melbourne on Saturday fanned the blazes, some of which the police suspected were set deliberately.
“Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria,” Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters on Sunday after meeting with emergency relief workers in Melbourne. “This is an appalling tragedy.”
On Monday, forensic crews began the grim task of searching for more bodies amid the tangled wreckage while roughly 3,000 firefighters, aided by cooler temperatures, continued to battle three main wildfires and dozens of smaller ones.
The police in Victoria said they were setting up crime scenes around large tracts of land northeast of Melbourne, where all of the deaths occurred, to try to determine how the fires started.
The deadliest previous blazes were the “Ash Wednesday” fires of 1983, when 75 people were killed and hundreds of homes were destroyed across southern Australia.
“They’re in very early stages of that investigation at the moment,” Sarah Campbell, a police spokeswoman, said Monday. “A lot of the fire sites are now too hot to go into.”
The police said at least two children were among the dead, and warned that the toll could rise as emergency crews searched for bodies in the hardest hit towns.
Several victims died trying to escape by car; others were caught up trying to protect their homes. Photographs from the fire zone showed chaotic scenes of vehicles that had smashed into embankments or trees, some charred and smoldering, others with the doors flung open.
More than 80 people were hospitalized across the fire zone, in southern Australia. The victims included at least 20 burn patients, some of whom were unlikely to survive, hospital officials said.
Fires are common during Australia’s hot, dry summers, when the oil-rich eucalyptus forests become especially vulnerable during lightning strikes or sparks thrown from farm equipment. But a prolonged drought and the weekend’s searing temperatures made recent conditions particularly bad.
Witnesses described seeing trees and houses explode into flames as ash and soot rained down. Many people were stranded at their homes, with no firefighters in sight and no time to escape.
John Ryan watched in horror as the sky above his farm turned from blue to black. Ten minutes later, the forest around his house was engulfed in flames.
“You couldn’t see anything, you couldn’t do anything and you couldn’t get out,” Mr. Ryan told a radio station on Sunday. “You just have to hope that the house wouldn’t burn down.”
He and a neighbor huddled in his house while the worst of the blaze passed through the mountains nearby. His home in Glenburn, 60 miles northeast of Melbourne, was spared, but his neighbor was not so fortunate.
“It burned everything as far as you can see,” Mr. Ryan said. “There’s nothing left, dead animals everywhere.”
In Kinglake, where at least 24 people died and more than 500 houses were burned to the ground, the police said they found several charred bodies in cars along the highway. Six people were found dead in one car, according to news media reports.
The police found eight bodies and were searching for more in nearby Marysville, an alpine village of about 600 people that was razed. Aerial images showed rows of buildings reduced to piles of rubble along neat streets lined with scorched trees.
About 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 news media reports. Two bodies were discovered in the town on Sunday, and emergency crews continued to search the wreckage.
The government set up a $6.5 million relief fund, including immediate payments of $650 to victims of the blaze. Mr. Rudd also sent the army to the region to help fight the fires and provide other 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.