Marysville wiped from the map as inferno shows no mercy
(This report was published in the Australian Newspaper, days after the event)

A SMOKY orange dawn rose over Marysville on February 8, revealing what emergency workers had dreaded throughout the long night.  The popular mountain hamlet of 600 people, 100km northeast of Melbourne, was no longer there.

Its neat tree-lined streets, its houses and up to a dozen of its residents had been engulfed by the inferno that roared into town like a freight train, leaving a moonscape of twisted roofs and smouldering cars.

Those who had not abandoned the town earlier huddled together on the sports fields as the flames ate up the township house by house. By dawn, the only building left standing in the main street was a bakery, with two horses stabled there. In an instant, Marysville had ceased to exist.

Locals yesterday spoke of bodies scattered around the town. Some died at the town's spa, where they had sought refuge.  Elsewhere, two local mothers are rumoured to have died with their children.  Nearby, the body of a woman was found in a car. Her favourite crockery was sitting on the seat next to her.

Not far away in Kinglake, the dawn revealed another horrific scene - a jumbled collection of burnt-out cars lining the roads out of the doomed township.  These cars were carrying the families who never made it out of the town.

Some had crashed into each other in their panic to escape the inferno that had surrounded their town. Others had their only escape route blocked by fallen trees as the fiery apocalypse enveloped them.

By the time rescuers reached these cars they were incinerated wrecks. Some had bodies in them. Others had been abandoned by their owners as the fires roared around them in a moment of unimaginable fear.

Where are the men, women and children who were in these abandoned cars? Did they live? Did they die? Right now, no one knows.

These same questions are being asked about dozens of missing people across Victoria today as the full horror of the worst day in the state's history becomes apparent.

With at least 109 confirmed dead, many still missing, and with up to 700 homes destroyed and bushfires continuing to rage across the state, tales of tragedies and miracles emerged from ordinary people who had suddenly found themselves in extraordinary situations.

There were mothers who survived by diving into dams with their young children as flames engulfed their homes.  Others fought to save their homes and their lives only to see their neighbours perish metres away, victims of the random brutality of what looks set tobecome the state's worst bushfires ever.

Those who fled by road at the 11th hour fared worst. At least six died in their cars trying to escape Kinglake. In Gippsland, in the state's east, four more bodies were found in a car near Churchill.  The scale of the unfolding disaster is such that Victoria feels like it is at war.

In the east of the state, firefighters have surrounded the Loy Yang power station, grimly defending the lifeline that feeds power to Melbourne.

Kevin Rudd has offered the army to help defend the state.  A tearful Premier John Brumby - who fought to save his own property near Bendigo - said many people never stood a chance. "The firefighters were hit early and hit hard and the fires were impossible to control - it was worse than Ash Wednesday and Black Friday (in 1939)."

How did this happen? In this age of instant, updated communications and state-of-the-art weather reports, and with thousands of well-prepared firefighters and emergency response plans, how did so many people die?

It wasn't through a lack of warning about what might happen. On Friday, Mr Brumby said bluntly that Saturday could be the "worst day in the history of the state".

Don't travel, don't go out, stay at home and check on your neighbours, he said.

But even those warnings could not overcome the fact that Victoria has suffered the perfect storm, when the elements combined to create a natural apocalypse of appalling dimensions.

Melbourne suffered the hottest day in its history on Saturday, with the temperature hitting 46.4C, but in some parts of the tinder-dry state the mercury nudged 48C.

The fatal factor was the wind, with gusts of 100km/h fanning flames, transforming small fires into infernos.

Even so, by early afternoon on Saturday, while large fires had broken around the state - near Kinglake, Bunyip, Wandong, Churchill, Bendigo and Hamilton - there were no reports of deaths.

It looked, momentarily, as if Victoria would survive, with extensive property damage but minimal loss of life.

Then the wind changed. In Melbourne the sky changed with it, turning an ominous purple-brown. Those with long memories recalled seeing the same sky once before - on Ash Wednesday in 1983, when 75 people died in Victoria and South Australia.

The southeasterly change, about 3pm, instantly doomed dozens of lives. It blew the fires from their predicted paths faster than anyone expected, confounding firefighters and suddenly posing a deadly threat to farms and townships that had appeared safe.

Firefronts exploded, racing up hills with inconceivable speed, swallowing all in their path.

The most deadly were those closest to Melbourne, in the Kinglake and Wandong area, where people say sheer walls of flames surged towards the small communities. In Wandong, locals spoke of how black smoke in the distance suddenly morphed into flames that roared up through the grass paddocks on the outskirts of their town, exploding trees and creating a fireball.

Chris Isbister lost his home and almost his life, being forced to hide under wet hessian blankets with his father and two mates as they watched the fire destroy hishome.

"We thought this was it," he said. "The four of us were sitting in the paddock and a bit of burning paper came out and hit my dad in the chest. And he said, 'Well, would you bloody look at that, it's the book of Moses'. It was a piece of the Bible."

Others in Wandong saved their homes by cutting off burning sections with a chainsaw.

The size of the fires across the state caused many of those who had decided to stay and defend their property to change their minds. For some, this turned out to be a fateful decision.

Many roads leading to freedom had been made impassable by falling trees. For others, the thick smoke made it impossible to see where they were driving. Cars were pelted by falling embers as black ash fell from the sky.

Those who drove too close to the fires risked their cars exploding into flames.

For too many, cars turned out to be a death-trap rather than a salvation, with most bodies so far being found in vehicles rather than in homes.

By late afternoon, with at least 14 people confirmed dead around Kinglake and Wandong, the fires began to lick at the fringes of suburban Melbourne. Fire even reached the suburban train network, with flames causing damage to the line between Belgrave and Ringwood. Flames roared up the hillsides on the northern and eastern outskirts of the city, razing numerous homes.

Elsewhere, the news became dire. A fire near Churchill in Gippsland was slicing through at least 80 homes, while on the outskirts of the goldfields city of Bendigo, in the state's northwest, up to 50 homes were razed - by a fire thought to have been lit by a cigarette.

As night fell on Saturday, authorities knew the official death toll of 14 was an absurd figure, masking the reality that there was no way to get access to the most damaged communities.

Instead of delivering some relief, the night brought only more tragedy, with fires descending on new communities, including Marysville.

In Marysville and in every other doomed township, the flames were indiscriminate. They destroyed police stations, schools, golf clubs, petrol stations and - as if to taunt firefighters - they even burnt down fire stations.

Those in those townships speak of how the skies went black before the flames roared in. People sought refuge wherever they could find it. In the old heritage town of Walhalla in Gippsland, the locals huddled together in a goldmine.

As dawn rose and with fires still burning, those emergency workers who were not fighting existing fires ventured into areas that had been burnt out the previous day.

What they discovered was horrific - and is still unfolding.

By lunchtime, they had discovered nine bodies in Gippsland, near Churchill, reportedly including four in one car. Elsewhere across the state, rescuers made a grim procession up the driveways of burnt-out farms to see if there were bodies amid the rubble.

And hundreds of people turned up at hospitals with burns. Eleven are in critical conditions.

While fires continue to rage in many areas, especially around Kinglake, Beechworth and Gippsland, the focus today will be on saving lives.

But soon enough, the questions will begin. Could more have been done to save lives? Can any government or authority insure properly against such freak weather?

And ugly questions will also be confronted about arsonists, who are suspected of lighting and re-lighting some of the state's most devastating blazes.

For now, the focus is still on saving lives.

Victorian government spokesman Stuart Ord said the most deadly blaze, near Kinglake, would burn for days.

"It's got a huge fire edge and it will not be contained for many many days," he said. "The problem is we are still trying to get into places. Some roads are blocked and it's very difficult to get in and get an accurate number of losses."

And that remains the most frightening part of this tragedy. No one yet knows exactly how many people have been killed.

In days ahead, rescue workers will retrace the path of the fireballs, searching lonely burnt-out farms and desperately hoping there was no one at home when the perfect storm hit.

Story thanks to The AUSTRALIAN Newspaper.

From the team at LakeEildon.com - Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone effected by these devastating bush fires.