NEWS | Wednesday, 11 February 2009

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The police confirmed that at least one of the deadly wildfires that killed 173 people and left hundreds homeless over the weekend in the worst firestorm ever to strike Australia was set by arsonists, and established a special task force on Tuesday to hunt down the offenders.
Two Australian nationals of Maltese descent, Freddy and Scott Frendo, died in the bushfires, One News reported, as more stories came in yesterday from immigrants who live in the affected areas.
Officials have set up crime scenes around huge tracts of land across the southern state of Victoria, where the fires levelled towns and razed at least 750 houses on Saturday, as forensic investigators picked through the charred wreckage. The police have warned that the death toll will continue to rise as more victims are pulled from the ashes.
The state police chief, Christine Nixon, told reporters on Tuesday that one of the fires, which killed at least 21 people in the eastern region of Gippsland, was deliberately lit, and said the police “believe there may be more.”
Nixon said the police were still investigating whether arsonists were responsible for Saturday’s most deadly blaze, a 60-mile-long fire front that killed several victims and destroyed hundreds of homes in the hills northeast of Melbourne.
Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd, said in an television interview on Monday that the arsonists were guilty of “mass murder.”
The wildfires tore through towns and homes northeast of Melbourne fanned by winds of more than 62 miles per hour and temperatures that reached 117 degrees. Wildfires have been burning across Victoria for weeks, but the record temperatures combined with the most severe drought in the country’s history have created what experts said were the worst fire conditions ever seen in Australia.
Thousands of firefighters continued to battle blazes in Victoria on Monday, and the premier of the state said he would review the emergency response to the fires, which destroyed several towns and at least 750 homes in the area of once tranquil mountain towns. Most of the damage in Victoria was wrought the 60-mile-long blaze that razed the village of Kinglake to the ground and destroyed several other small villages nearby.
Thomas Libreri, a home builder in Kinglake, said his first warning had been the roar of flames coming over a ridge toward his house.
“I heard the noise, and then I had about 20 seconds to react,” Libreri told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday. Most of the homes on his block were destroyed within minutes, he said. Libreri said he and a neighbour had grabbed a man who suffered severe burns and threw him into a swimming pool — then waited six hours for rescue teams to arrive.
Police tape encircled the wreckage of several houses in the tiny town of Strathewen, where 30 of the town’s 450 people were thought to have died in the blaze, according to a reporter from The Age newspaper who toured the site with a fire official.
Nixon said the process of removing and identifying the dead could take days because the police were treating each death as a potential homicide.
“This will take some time,” she told reporters on Monday. “It is a complex matter, and we must be accurate.”
Australians are no strangers to wildfires or bush fires. Every summer, thousands of fires burn across this hot, dry continent, and there are not enough firefighters to protect every home. Many in rural Australia know that it is only a matter of time before they, or someone they know, will face a stark choice: evacuate or stay and fight the fires.
Fire authorities across Australia advise residents who choose to defend their homes to stay indoors while the blaze passes through their area. Citing statistics from past fires, the agencies say that most people can survive a wildfire as long as they avoid direct contact with the searing temperatures and scalding gases that come with an advancing fire.
However, many of the residents caught up in the Victoria blazes had no time for an orderly escape, and some were killed when the houses they had taken shelter in collapsed.
Victoria’s premier, John Brumby, said the government would set up a commission to examine the emergency response and review the longstanding policy of advising residents to “stay and defend or leave early.”
“People will want to review that, examine that,” he told local radio on Monday. “There is no question that there were people who did everything right, put in place their fire plan and it wouldn’t matter, their house was just incinerated.”
The firestorms and heat in the south revived discussions in Australia of whether human-caused global warming was contributing to the continent’s climate woes of late — including recent prolonged drought in some places and severe flooding last week in Queensland, in the northeast.
Climate scientists say that no single rare event like the deadly heat wave or fires can be attributed to global warming, but the chances of experiencing such conditions are rising along with the temperature. In 2007, Australia’s national science agency published a 147-page report on projected climate changes, concluding, among other things, that “high-fire-danger weather is likely to increase in the southeast.”
The flooding in the northeast and the combustible conditions in the south were both consistent with what is forecast as a result of recent shifts in Southern Hemisphere climate patterns linked to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, said Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the United States National Centre for Atmos.

Bushfire dilemma: Flee or fight?

The human cost of the current Australian bushfires is unprecedented. But with ample warning of the encroaching fires given to residents, why have so many perished?
Days before this weekend’s infernos, the authorities urged people in the bushfire zones to evacuate early or stand their ground, but many victims appear to have been ill-prepared or fled at the wrong time.
It was the speed at which the fire fronts travelled that appears to have caught many out.
A prolonged drought combined with record-high temperatures turned the south-eastern state of Victoria into a powder keg.
Human error – or deliberate acts of arson – added to this volatile mix, sparking more than 100 fires on Saturday alone.
Australian bushfires can move with terrifying pace, partly because native Eucalypt forests throw out lots of embers, sparking new fires.
Bushfire experts say that people who thought they had plenty of time to get away suddenly found themselves trapped in the middle of a “fire storm”.
Kevin Tolhurst is an Australian fire behaviour specialist who has tracked hundreds of bushfires. He says many of the victims appear to have left their homes too late.
“They’ve waited to see the fire. If you see smoke or you’re underneath the smoke plume then you ought to be concerned and if your plan is to evacuate, that’s the time to do it.”
The University of Melbourne expert says a fire’s progress is not constant but can “pulse” – a movement which catches people out.
For example in a forest a fire moves at 5km/h on average and in grassland areas it can be about 10km/h. But at times the fire can cover 400m to 600m in a matter of seconds.
“A pulse can go as quick as the speed of the wind. People think they’re a safe distance away but suddenly they find themselves surrounded by fire. The time to respond is very short,” says Mr Tolhurst.
Those who choose not to evacuate their home must be prepared to defend their properties and be brave enough to stand their ground.
Before the fire front passes, this means clearing an area around the house of vegetation likely to burn, hosing down the property and stamping out embers – anything to prevent the house from igniting.
As the fire closes in, residents are advised to stay away from the windows where the heat radiation is most intense, and breathe through a cloth to protect their lungs.
“It takes several minutes at least before a house catches alight fully and provides refuge for some time,” says Mr Tolhurst.
“Even if you’re not successful in saving the house at least you have been saved in the time that the main fire has passed, then you can escape outside.”
Those who have survived a fire front say the heat and the noise are overwhelming, leaving them with a sense of helplessness when confronted with such an enormous force.
The air is incredibly hot and full of gases combusting, making it difficult to breathe. The heat radiation is inescapable as the wall of flames moves continually forward.
Many of those who perished in the fires were trapped in their cars, according to Australian media reports.
The air inside the car heats up quickly because it is such a small space, says Mr Tolhurst. The only way to survive is to get down low and cover yourself with a blanket or cloth.
You can get out of the car within in a couple of minutes of the fire passing but experts say that Saturday’s fires were so intense that many were unable to withstand the heat.
Bushfires are an inevitable and intrinsic element in the life cycle of Australia’s forests. Their menace is one faced every year.
Climate change, weather and drought are altering the nature, ferocity and duration of bushfires.

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