Bushfires continue to burn in Australia's southeast
Updated
The bushfire threat in parts of rural Victoria has eased with most fire alerts being downgraded after decent rain fell overnight.
The death toll has now reached 181, but is expected to approach 300. It's now been five days of some of the most extreme fire threat the country has ever known.
Presenter: Karon Snowdon
Speaker: John Brumby, Victorian Premier; Budiarman Bahar, Indonesian Consul-General, Melbourne; Associate Professor Robert Heath, School of Management, University of South Australia
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SNOWDON: The names of towns like Kinglake, Marysville, and Callignee are becoming well-known around the world. They've been almost obliterated and in the case of Callignee completely burnt off the map. In Marysville - a town of 500 - it's believed one in five residents have died. In one of the hottest and driest nations - one used to summer fires, it's hard even for Australians to comprehend the horror of the mega-fires that ripped through these communities or just why so many died.
Associate Professor Robert Heath has studied fires for many years. He describes what confronted people during the worst of the heatwave on Saturday when temperatures exceeded 40 degrees celsius, wind gusts were between 50 and one hundred kilometres an hour and eucalypt trees exploded.
HEATH: The fires will kill mainly through radiant heat. Understand that the temperatures are somewhere at times over 1300 degrees celsius, certainly above one thousand degrees celsius. You can literally die from your lungs searing up and not being able to breathe. In fact most people are not burnt to death; they're dead before they get burnt.
SNOWDON: Fires have been a constant for people in Australia for thousands of years but such ferocity is rare. Robert Heath explains.
HEATH: Most people have never experienced this in fact most people unfortunately have never even experienced a moderate or low bush fire or wild fire. This sort of fire when it's coming at you literally pushes you on your backside, it pushes you over because it sounds like a combination of a tornado or a set jets coming at you. The heat burning your skin as you're watching, and I'm not talking about up close and personal, I'm still talking about a couple of hundred of metres away
SNOWDON: Weather conditions have eased but three thousand firefighters continue to battle a dozen blazes around the state. Investigations have begun into the operation of warning systems and emergency services, says Victoria's Premier John Brumby.
BRUMBY: What occurred on Saturday, and I know from my own experience is you had literally millions of people using the telecommunication services and many mobile phones simply didn't get through because the system was overcrowded. I think in the future of the nature of the messaging is likely to be more text messaging so that these things can get out even when the system is under huge load. Having said that and I guess all of these things will be examined by the Royal Commission.
SNOWDON: Authorities are still preventing residents from returning to burnt areas as the grim task of retrieving and identifying bodies continues.
Condolences, aid and money have been pouring in from around the country and around the world.
Indonesia will send a disaster victim identification team of up to 20 experts to help identify bodies which have filled hospitals and morgues.
Indonesia's Consul General in Melbourne Budiarman Bahar passed on the offer to John Brumby in recent days.
BAHAR: Your DVI team here is working very hard and I thought it would be good if we can also help the DVI team here. Practical assistance we can do this time. At this time we are able to help, we have these people, that for your information indeed they are trained by the Australians. So this is a good time for them also to pay respect and to contribute for Australia.
SNOWDON: It might take months to identify all the bodies.
Meanwhile more evidence has emerged that some of the fires were deliberately started and others were lit even today. Robert Heath from the University of South Australia is not surprised that arsonists are active.
HEATH: Unfortunately somewhere between one and four and one in three are deliberate.
