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Posted on 01/19/2003 3:38:02 PM PST by blam
Canberra in panic as four die in 'worst bushfires ever'
By Kathy Marks in Melbourne
20 January 2003
Thick smoke blanketed the Australian capital, Canberra, yesterday and a layer of ash coated the white Parliament building after forest fires raced into the city, killing four people and destroying 400 homes.
Emergency services remained on high alert as authorities warned that hot, windy weather forecast for today could whip up flames that are still burning in bushland around the city. More than 1,000 people remained in evacuation centres, while others were allowed to return to the wreckage of their suburban homes.
The firestorms that hit Canberra on Saturday, laying waste to suburban streets and overwhelming firefighters, were the capital's worst. "This is certainly the most devastating bushfire experience that any community in Australia has ever suffered," said John Stanhope, Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory.
Mr Stanhope defended emergency services against criticism that they were unprepared for the scale of the disaster, with hundreds of householders left to fight the flames alone with buckets and garden hoses. "It was a one-in-100 or 200 years' experience, an event of such enormity, of such force and such devastating power that it simply ran over the top of us," he said.
The bushfires that swept into the suburbs, driven by hot, strong winds and fuelled by tinder-dry pine forests and grasslands, had been burning in mountains west of the capital for weeks. Most were started by lightning strikes.
Don Horan, a resident of the worst-affected neighbourhood, Duffy, saw the wall of fire approaching. "It knocked me off my feet," he said. "I ran inside. When the fireball had passed, the sky rained burning embers.
"It was horrendous. The whole area just blew up. Then the fire got underneath my house and I knew I had to get out. I just grabbed the two cats and ran for it." The victims, including a 61-year-old man and an 83-year-old woman, died of smoke inhalation in Duffy.
A total of 260 Canberra residents were injured and 50 remained in hospital yesterday including three who were in a critical condition with severe burns. As well as politicians and diplomats, Canberra is home to 350,000 ordinary Australians, many of them attracted by the beautiful bushland that rings the city. One of the worst droughts in a century has turned the vegetation – which is fire-prone at the best of times – into a tinder-box.
John Howard, the Prime Minister, cut short his annual holiday to tour fire-ravaged areas and comfort residents. "I have been to a lot of bushfire scenes in Australia, but this is by far the worst," he said. "A man, a veteran of World War Two, showed me his charred medals. One lady, clearly traumatised, said that she had lost everything."
Power and communications were severely affected by the fires, with an estimated one-quarter of homes without electricity yesterday and raw sewage threatening to spill into a river system that supplies water for a large area of south-eastern Australia.
Authorities warned of an extreme danger of fire over the next two days.
"You've got just about every tree, the whole root system, still smoking," said Mike Castle, director of emergency services. There are fears that nine fires could merge to form an unstoppable wall of flames.
As firefighters strengthened defences around the capital, residents of Duffy sifted the charred remains of their homes. Melted garden hoses lay strewn like snakes across blackened lawns and the streets were full of wildlife including birds, kangaroos and dogs, some dead, some alive.
Ross White, a psychologist in Duffy, who lost his house and all his client files to the flames, said: "All I have is the clothes I'm wearing and a garden gnome."
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