Aftermath

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More Australian arsonists hunted
BBC News, UK - 3 hours ago
Australian officials suspect arsonists were responsible for starting fresh fires in Victoria, as a dozen bushfires continued to burn in the state. ...
Warning system wouldn't have worked: Brumby
ABC Online, Australia - 4 hours ago
Fates sealed...changing winds caused the fires to speed up before a warning could have been effective. (User submitted: Chris Mulherin) Victorian Premier ...
The rebuilding work begins after Victorian bushfires
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 5 hours ago
AN army of tradies and engineers will flood into Victoria's fire-ravaged communities in coming months as part of the government's promise to rebuild every ...
Crisis survived, we must quickly apply the lessons
The Australian, Australia - 6 hours ago
A NATION reveals itself in a crisis. The artifice is stripped away, the finery and the fashion disappear. Here is the nation in its true form. ...
Victoria bushfire body count could hit 300 - Christine Nixon
Courier Mail, Australia - 6 hours ago
VICTORIA'S Police Commissioner Christine Nixon has warned the state's coroner to prepare for as many as 300 bodies, with many unlikely to be identified. ...
Climate models predicted Australian bushfires
New Scientist, UK - 1 hour ago
AUSTRALIA may have just had a horrifying preview of what climate change has in store for its people. Even early warning couldn't stop last weekend's bush ...
Together, we will rebuild
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia - 6 hours ago
IT is impossible to convey the full range of emotions stirred by the bushfire disaster in Victoria. There is deep, unbearable sadness at so many lives lost. ...
Australian residents return to scorched homes
Deutsche Welle, Germany - 3 hours ago
Residents of some towns devastated by the worst wildfires in Australia's history have begun returning home. Some fire-wrecked locations remain off limits as ...
Australia braces itself grisly discoveries
Financial Times, UK - 10 hours ago
By Peter Smith in Sydney The death toll in Australia’s worst bushfires is expected to climb past 200 in the coming days as forensic experts examine the ...
Federal MPs united over Vic bushfires
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 8 Feb 2009
Federal politicians arriving at Parliament House have put aside their differences to express sympathy and support for those caught up in the Victorian ...
PM warns of 'frustrations' as fire crisis continues
ABC Online, Australia - 14 hours ago
By Online parliamentary correspondent Emma Rodgers Australia remains in a fire crisis with the threats moving to a new stage, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ...
Fire advice was right - Premier
The Australian, Australia - 21 hours ago
Article from: Australian AP VICTORIAN Premier John Brumby says the stay-or-go bushfire advice to householder will stay in place while the royal commission ...
Architect calls for bunkers in fire zone homes
ABC Online, Australia - 20 hours ago
An architect says fire bunkers should be included when rebuilding communities affected by Victoria's worst bushfires. Retiring Victorian Police Chief ...
Manage bush better so climate won't matter
The Australian, Australia - 6 hours ago
LAST year the Wilderness Society published a six-point action plan to "reduce bushfire risks and help to protect people, property, wildlife and their ...

Fire aftermath 'too distressing'
BBC News, UK - 16 hours ago
Australian police are stopping some residents of bushfire-hit areas from returning to their homes, saying the scenes would be too gruesome. ...
Victoria bushfires stoked by green vote
The Australian, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
VICTORIA has suffered the most tragic bushfire disaster to have occurred on this continent throughout its period of human habitation. ...
Don't build in the fire's path
The Australian, Australia - 10 Feb 2009
A DANGEROUS cocktail of increased fire risk and higher populations is emerging on the periphery of many Australian cities and regional centres. ...
Hunt begins for arsonists as Victoria bushfires toll rises
The Australian, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
POLICE will pursue anyone who has deliberately lit fires that have ravaged Victoria, Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon says. ...
A history of fatal Australian bushfires
The Australian, Australia - 7 Feb 2009
Feb 7, 2009 - Sixty-five people confirmed killed and fears of more fatalities in bushfires across rural Victoria. Dec 30, 2007 - Blaze kills three truckers ...
At least 84 dead in Victorian bushfires
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 7 Feb 2009
The death toll from Victoria's bushfires has risen to 84, police say, in what has officially become Australia's deadliest bushfires disaster. ...

Victorian bushfires now worst in Australian history
The Australian, Australia - 8 Feb 2009
By Sandra O'Malley | February 09, 2009 Article from: Australian AP PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has told the nation to prepare itself for worse news as the ...
Bushfire toll 'to rise well over 200'
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
Victorian Premier John Brumby says the death toll from the bushfires will rise well beyond 200 and the coroner had conceded as much. ...
Australian arsonists likely to be young and male
Reuters - 8 hours ago
By James Grubel CANBERRA (Reuters) - The arsonist Australian police suspect lit one of the weekend's deadly wildfires is likely to be a young male who could ...
Victoria's day of 'tragedy, courage and sheer luck'
The Australian, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
AN emotional Julia Gillard yesterday described the bushfires as "one of the darkest days of Australia's peacetime history" as she led a condolence motion in ...
Army called in to help battle Victorian bushfires
The Australian, Australia - 7 Feb 2009
By Greg Roberts | February 08, 2009 Article from: Australian AP THE Australian army will be brought in to help in the worst bushfires in Victoria's history. ...
States send firefighters to Victoria
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 8 Feb 2009
States and territories stood shoulder to shoulder with Victoria in a show of interstate mateship, promising help to the state reeling from killer bushfires. ...
Police track arsonists responsible for Victoria bushfires
The Australian, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
VICTORIAN police are starting to shift their focus from the fires and the victims to tracking down the people who started them. Chief Commissioner Christine ...
14 dead in Victorian inferno
ABC Online, Australia - 7 Feb 2009
Tragedy ... police fear up to 40 people may have died in today's horrific fires. (AAP: Andrew Brownbill) Fourteen people are dead and at least 100 homes ...
181 dead as bushfires continue to wreak havoc
ABC Online, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
Firefighters are battling 25 bushfires across Victoria, as the death toll rises to 181, making it the country's worst bushfire disaster. ...
NZ pledges to send firies to Australia
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 8 Feb 2009
Prime Minister John Key says New Zealand will dispatch firefighters "very soon" to help tackle the devastating Victorian bushfires, which have killed more ...

Google News 6.53am 12 February 2009.

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It's still the same bonhomie. Our Nicole donated $500,000 yesterday to the bush fire appeal, coming on television to announce the gift. Husband in tow. Skin polished to an inch. Clairvoyant, dark, the crumpled houses and x-ray trees dominate every image we see; distressed people embracing each other; the horror of the burnt. The only way you could tell they were children was the size of their skulls, one said. We sink into this media saturation; other people's pain. The government tries to pass the economic stimulus package. It doesn't do enough for the Murray Darling Basin, said Xenophon. They are crippled by their lack of belief; the utter amorality of it all.

Tiny voices raised in dissent; while the so-called Great Dissenter, who spent his life being surrounded by the applause of the left, Michael Kirby, the so-called champion of the people, the oppressed, openly gay, the first, has left the High Court, as always surrounded by applause. Try taking an unpopular or unfashionable position and holding to it; and then see how much applause you get. The telaphon's are running on television now; an astonishing $74 million raised last time he looked. Interspersed with reports from the fire zone. We're crippled, desperately sad. And we look at this catastrophe in our neighbouring state; and are both kind and cruel, going about our daily lives.

Let it go, let it go, Mick said, and the things he couldn't write, the enormous burdens, these things too washed away, like history itself. Already there was something historic about the events. The bush fire stories you have to know.
The suffering you have to see. Shattered lives. They pick through the ashes of their homes; astonished at how little is left. The fireball ate everything. Two cups, a woman displayed, that was it. All the normal things you don't associate with burning, fridges, freezers, lounge rooms, laundries, all of it fed the fury of the fire ball. That giant, burning heat, incendiary, whoosh whoosh, the fires were burning in everyone's dreams, people screaming in their last terrifying moments.

The horrific nature of the events took everyone back. A sombre air settled across the crowd. The bodies burnt in the houses; naturally incinerated, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Identification, they said, would be difficult in many cases. There was so little left. Pale patches on burnt ground. Entire villages burnt to the ground. People who wanted to get away from it all, living in the forest. There was more fuel around than there had been for 30,000 years, some of the commentators said. The greenies policies of not burning off had created a disaster. The climate change mob were baying frantically, never let a chance go by.

It's true, every time you go to a fire most of the locals, particularly those who have lived in the area for a long time, complain bitterly that the greens on the council are stopping them from burning off. Prior to European invasion, the aborigines regularly burnt off, flushing out wildlife for food and leaving open woodland, ideal for kangaroo grazing. Now they all want to revert to some pre-human state, wild, primitive, locked up forests. They talk about the wild beauty of nature; its savage brutality. They count the dead. Even trying to compose lists of the dead and missing is proving an enormous headache.

So we mourn, we sympathise, we donate. We mist up in sympathy at the images on television. Familiar faces report from the fire zone. The country coalesces around its own heartland; a common sense of decency. We're all in this together, say the millionaires. We shudder at the hypocrisy, yet it seems briefly true. All the parasites, the politicians, the lawyers, the parking cops, the bureaucrats, briefly all is forgiven, the common man rises. And woman. As they embrace tearfully. All is forgiven and they unite in common sympathy; and he watches distanced the x-ray trees, the blackened hills, the collapsed villages, the burnt out houses, sheets of tin all that is left. He can barely absorb the stories of heroism and survival; the breadth of the disaster, our own shattering insignificant against the scale of other people's suffering, grief, their enormous loss.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/10/2487743.htm

Firefighters are battling 25 bushfires across Victoria, as the death toll rises to 181, making it the country's worst bushfire disaster.

Victorian Premier John Brumby says he expects the death toll from the disaster to exceed 200, with more than 50 people still missing, thought to be dead.

The blazes have burnt through more than 3,000 square kilometres - entire towns were wiped off the map within 24 hours at the weekend.

More than 900 homes have been destroyed and 7,000 survivors have registered for assistance with the Red Cross.

The Bunyip Ridge fire that has burned through 25,000 hectares is no longer threatening homes.

But CFA Incident Controller Chris Hardman says the blaze is far from being brought under control.

"The perimeter of this fire is about 65 kilometres so it's going to take a number of... maybe even a couple of weeks to get this fire contained," he said.

"But we're going to be working really hard to focus on those areas that have the greatest risk of escape, so at this stage that's on the north-western and north-eastern side of this fire that's where we're putting all of our activity."

The fire had destroyed several homes in Labertouche, Jinviick West and Drouin West.

Urgent threat messages were issued for residents near Currawong Drive, East Beenak Road, and Pack Track in Gembrook.

Southerly winds are also fanning the Murrindindi-Yea fire burning near Alexandra.

Residents in the vicinity of Yarck, Caveat, Taggerty, Cathedral Lane and Rubicon, Connellys Creek, Acheron, Crystal Creek, Crystal Creek Road, Narbethong, Scrubby Creek and along Whanregarwen Road from the Maroondah Highway near Alexandra through to Molesworth are urged to remain vigilant.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25032976-5013871,00.html

AN emotional Julia Gillard yesterday described the bushfires as "one of the darkest days of Australia's peacetime history" as she led a condolence motion in federal parliament.

Parliamentary business was suspended as a mark of respect to those who died.

The Deputy Prime Minister told through tears stories of tragedy, including that of Rebecca Buchanan, who lost her 15-year-old son "Macca" Mackenzie, nine-year-old daughter Neeve and her brother Danny Clark, 37.

"That's perhaps the greatest tragedy, that children were involved," she told the House of Representatives.

Ms Gillard said the bushfires were blacker than the human tragedies of Black Friday of 1939 and Ash Wednesday of 1983.

She said February 7, 2009, would be remembered as a day of tragedy, courage and sheer luck.

"As a Melburnian and a Victorian, the reality of the loss took on a familiar face with the death of the revered Brian Naylor and his wife Moiree at their Kinglake West home," Ms Gillard said.

"But of course Brian and Moiree Naylor are just one set of parents, friends and neighbours lost in these tragic events."

Malcolm Turnbull said the Coalition fully supported action taken by the Government to help those affected by the tragedy.

The Opposition Leader spoke of the harsh reality of living in such a beautiful country.

"Surely it is a terrible beauty and we have seen the full terror of that beauty in the last few days," Mr Turnbull told the House of Representatives. "Last Saturday was such a day, freakishly high temperatures, ferocious winds, a savage brute of a day, the like of which Victorians have never seen and would hope never to see again. That is the cruel paradox of the land in which we live."

MPs paid tribute to the remarkable courage of those people who battled the blazes, among them two firefighters whose own families perished as they fought to help others.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7883970.stm

Australian officials suspect arsonists were responsible for starting fresh fires in Victoria, as a dozen bushfires continued to burn in the state.

State Premier John Brumby said he was aware of "several" fires being lit deliberately in the Beechworth area northeast of Melbourne late on Tuesday.

More than 180 people have been killed in fires since Saturday.

Bodies are still being retrieved, prompting police to bar residents from returning to some towns.

They said the sight of the burned bodies would be too distressing for residents.

See map of fires

Amid on-going firefighting plus a wide-scale investigation into the country's worst fire disaster, Mr Brumby said of the most recent outbreaks: "There seems little doubt that these were deliberately lit."

Arson investigators said they had found six main sources of Saturday's fires. They had found one case of foul play near the town of Churchill, about 90 miles (140km) southeast of Melbourne, and a suspect was being sought.

Four other fire sources were not suspicious and one, the Marysville fire, was not yet determined, investigators said.

Difficult identification

In Marysville, which remains cordoned off, Mr Brumby said 50 to 100 of the town's 500-odd residents could have been killed. Only eight have so far been confirmed dead.

"There are still deceased persons in homes," he said. Police, fire officials and soldiers had still not been able to identify and remove all bodies, he added.

The Bureau of Meteorology said the temperature on Saturday - the worst day for the fires - reached 46.4 Celsius in Melbourne, a hotter day than 13 January 1939, when bushfires killed 71 people.


Sydney Tunnels; this is probably the M5.