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Australian bushfire threat falls with record temperatures

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-02 16:49

MELBOURNE – Stricken residents of southeast Australia began returning to their charred homes Monday after bushfires set by arsonists and fuelled by record temperatures reduced 29 houses to ruins.

A NASA Earth Observatory photo shows a large plume of smoke spreading southward from a fire (outlined) in the Australian state of Victoria. Stricken residents of southeast Australia began returning to their charred homes Monday after bushfires set by arsonists and fuelled by record temperatures reduced 29 houses to ruins. [Agencies]

Cooler temperatures brought desperately needed relief from the worst heatwave in a century that fanned fires, paralysed electricity and rail grids and claimed up to 35 lives.

The heatwave even crippled a brand new 100-million-dollar (US$63 million) Ferris wheel in the country's second largest city, Melbourne, when three days of searing temperatures buckled braces on the ride, its operators said.

"It's just seeing it so black, there's nothing left," said tearful Helen Morrison as she picked through a mangled pile of corrugated iron and ash that had been her home in the town of Boolarra, northeast of Melbourne.

"How could they do something like this?" she said after authorities said they were hunting arsonists who are believed to have set the blaze that burned out of control from Thursday until Sunday.

The premier of the state of Victoria, John Brumby, pledged Monday to find the arsonists and punish them severely.

"To think that there is somebody, or somebodies, out there deliberately lighting a fire which not only has destroyed property, destroyed people's homes, their dreams, which could have cost lives," he said.

"There is no more... cowardly, destructive act, no more anti-social act than deliberately lighting a fire to threaten property and threaten people, and I can tell you that every single resource is being thrown at this to catch the person or persons responsible."

Convicted arsonists face up to 15 years in jail and up to 25 years if the fires they set take lives.

Five other blazes were still burning in Victoria region, but firefighters were beginning to win the battle after temperatures dropped from their peak of 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) on Friday down into the early 30s.

"For the moment it looks like the worst is over," a spokeswoman of the Country Fire Service said.

The worst heatwave in a century has also been blamed for deaths from heat-related illnesses in Melbourne, Victoria's state capital, and Adelaide, the capital of neighbouring South Australia.