Australian wildfires leave grisly scene

Tolls likely to rise
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 be held to examine all aspects of the fires, including warning and evacuation policies.

"I think our policy has served us well in what I call normal conditions. These were unbelievable circumstances," Brumby said on ABC television, adding that the policy of "leave early or stay and defend property" would come under scrutiny.

Former Victorian police ministers Andre Haermeyer and Pat McNamara dismissed forced evacuations as an alternative.

"This fire turned so quickly and with such a force, you wonder what systems, what procedures, could have given people chance to get out," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

John Handmer, a wildfire safety expert at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, said research had shown that people in the path of a blaze must get out early or stay inside until the worst has past. "Fleeing at the last moment is the worst possible option," he said.

Tales of survival
There were extraordinary tales of survival.

Daryl Hogan of Wandong, 12 miles (19 kilometers) north of Whittlesea, said he jumped into his pool to escape the flames as they roared over his house, leaving it unburned but destroying his neighbor's home.

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Mark Strubing said he and a companion were unable to outrace the flames, so they took refuge in a drainage pipe under the road as his property outside Kinglake burned.

"Mate, I've looked at this pipe before, you'd never ever crawl under there. It's full of spiders and all sorts of uglies," he told Nine Network TV news.

He said they rolled around in the water in the pipe to wet their clothing as flames started licking inside their refuge.

"It was a terrible dark place to go, but it felt pretty good at the time because I'd be dead right now if I didn't," he said. "How we didn't burn I don't know. I'm in shock. I've lost everything. Two properties."

Scientists say it is impossible to blame man-made global warming causes for any single event, such as the weekend wildfires. However, Australia's top climate scientists said in a major report two years ago that global warming will make the country more prone to these types of intensive fires, even pinpointing the region now ablaze.

"Heat waves and fires are virtually certain to increase in intensity and frequency" in Australia and New Zealand, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2007. The panel of the world's top climate scientists pointed to the 2003 Canberra that killed four people and destroyed 500 homes as an example of extreme events that are likely to increase.

"An increase in fire danger in Australia is likely to be associated with a reduced interval between fires, increased fire intensity, a decrease in fire extinguishments and faster fire spread," the report said. "In southeast Australia, the frequency of every high and extremely fire danger days is likely to rise by 4-25 percent by 2020 and 15-70 percent by 2050."

The conditions that lead to more fires are worsened by global warming, said Mike MacCracken, scientist at the Climate Institute in Washington.

"Both the rising carbon dioxide concentration and climate change cause conditions to be more favorable to wildfire," MacCracken said. "you get faster build of biomass (grasses and trees), you get more intense drying, longer periods without rain. So you create the conditions that can lead to wildfire."

More on Australia  |  Wildfires

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