Raging wildfires kill at least 14 in Australia

[February 07, 2009]  SYDNEY (AP) -- Raging wildfires swept southeastern Australia on Saturday, killing at least 14 people and razing some 100 homes as scorching temperatures and gale-force winds combined into a deadly inferno.

Victoria state police said the death toll might exceed 40 as dozens of fires burned unchecked into the night. Some officials described the day as the worst in the sunburned country's history of wildfires.

More than 30,000 volunteer firefighters were battling fires after dark, when helicopters and planes that hand-dumped millions of tons of water on the flames returned to base for safety reasons.

Residents in the paths of the fires reported seeing their towns ablaze, and television footage showed flames leaping at least 25 feet (8 meters) in the air.

"The whole township is pretty much on fire," Peter Mitchell, a resident of Kinglake town, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. "There was no time to do anything ... it came through in minutes."

Officials said chaotic scenes on the ground and ongoing firefighting efforts had hampered the collection of information, including the number of deaths and properties burned.

Victoria deputy police commissioner Kieran Walshe said 14 people were confirmed dead at four different sites, all connected to the same fire in Gippsland, a large farming region dotted by small towns and national parks of old-growth eucalyptus trees.

The deadly fire burned on a front of up to 12 miles (20 kilometers) and was moving at around 40 mph (60 kph), officials said. At least 115 square miles (30,000 hectares) was burned out by that one fire.

Of those killed, six died in the same vehicle at Kinglake town, Walshe said.

"This has been an absolute tragedy for this state," he told a news conference. "We believe this figure may only get worse, we are concerned that this figure could even reach up into the 40s."

Victoria's fires were by far the worst of blazes in three states Saturday as temperatures soared to 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47 Celsius).

Victoria's Country Fire Authority deputy chief Greg Esnouf said the conditions on Saturday were "off the scale" in terms of danger, and warned that the forecast for Sunday was the same.

Police said they believed some of the fires were deliberately lit and were questioning one man in relation to a fire near the Victoria state capital of Melbourne.

Wildfires are common during the Australian summer, as rising temperatures bake forest land tinder dry and blustering winds fan embers. Some 60,000 fires occur each year, and about half are deliberately lit or suspicious, government research says. Lightning strikes and human activity such as use of machinery near dry brush cause the others.

Australia's deadliest fires were in 1983, when blazes killed 75 people and razed more than 3,000 homes in Victoria and South Australia. In 2003, hundreds of houses were destroyed and four people died when a huge blaze tore into the national capital, Canberra. In 2006, nine people died in fires on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula.

[Associated Press; By ROHAN SULLIVAN]

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