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Source: Reuters -
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Australia's deadliest bushfire has killed at least 108 people,
some as they fled in cars or as they huddled in houses when the
inferno engulfed rural towns in the country's southeast.
The fire storm tore through several small towns north of Melbourne
on Saturday night destroying everything in its path. One family was
forced to dive into a farm reservoir to survive while others took
refuge in a community shed with firefighters standing between them
and a wall of flames.
A badly burnt man in the town of Kinglake, where there were many
fatalities, was kept alive for six hours by being partially
submerged by friends in a pool until help arrived.
"It rained fire," said one survivor, showing his singed shirt. "We
hid in the olive grove and watched our house burn."
On Sunday, the remains of charred cars littered the smouldering
towns, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Melbourne. Some vehicles had
crashed into each other as their drivers frantically tried to
escape the fire.
"Out there it has been hell on earth," Victoria state Premier
John Brumby said in a television address.
Police said the toll could continue to rise as they search the
ruins of the wild fires and with 20 people with serious burns in
hospital. Thousands of firefighters were still battling dozens of
fires in Victoria and New South Wales state on Sunday night.
"We will find more bodies as we gain access to different parts of
the fire areas," Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon
told a news conference.
"We have found people in cars, it looks like they have decided
late to leave their premises. We have found people who have been in
properties, in their paddocks. We've found others in their houses.
And the sad part is that we found children."
Nixon said some of the fires may have been deliberately lit.
The previous worst bushfire tragedy was in 1983 when 75 people were
killed in the "Ash Wednesday" fires.
Survivors said the Victorian inferno reached four storeys high and
raced across the land like speeding trains.
"It went through like a bullet," Darren Webb-Johnson, a resident of
the small rural town of Kinglake, told Sky TV.
Towns destroyed
"Hell and its fury have visited the good people of Victoria," said
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who announced a A$10 million
aid package. "The nation grieves with Victoria. Many good people
now lie dead. Many others lie injured," said Rudd. The army has
been put on standby.
Firefighters said about 750 homes had been destroyed in the fires
across Victoria state so far this weekend, the vast majority in the
worst-affected areas north of Melbourne.
Wildfires are a natural annual event in Australia, but this year a
combination of scorching weather, drought and tinder-dry bush has
created prime conditions for blazes to take hold. Green lawmakers
have been urging stiffer climate-change policies to reduce the risk
of more such summer disasters.
Dazed survivors, wrapped in blankets, wandered through twisted and
charred remains on Sunday, some crying, not knowing whether friends
of family had survived.
At the town of Wandong, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Melbourne,
one survivor said he had found the body of a friend in the laundry
of a burnt-out house.
"Another 20 seconds and we were gone. We lost our dogs. There have
been a lot of dead people. My next door neighbour didn't make it,"
said one survivor.
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