Firestorm

The bushfires that claimed at least 180 lives (currently standing at 189) in Australia were fanned by sudden wind changes, drought-like conditions and native trees which can explode in towering fireballs under extreme heat.Survivors told again and again how they were taken by surprise by the speed of the blaze as it leapt carefully constructed firebreaks and engulfed buildings before people could gather their senses to flee.Many of the victims were found charred in their cars on country roads short distances from their homes, having left their dash too late."I've never seen anything like this. It was like a mushroom cloud, an orange ball of fire above us, and when the southerly winds came up it just took off and roared up the gullies," Rob Langston, a volunteer firefighter for 30 years, told The Australian newspaper Tuesday.The fires affected an area of 3,000 square kilometres (1,200 square miles) -- territory larger than Luxembourg or nearly three times the size of Hong Kong -- and wiped entire towns off the map within about 24 hours on the weekend.They were fanned by a heatwave that sent temperatures soaring to 46 C (115 F) around the southern city of Melbourne, combined with hot northerly winds which switched and changed at critical moments.
Witnesses saw native flora such as eucalypt hardwoods and smaller, fragrant tea-trees explode as the flames ignited their natural oils.Used in everything from shampoos and cold treatments to insect repellents, such oils vaporise in intense heat and hang in the air waiting to ignite when the flames arrive, sending embers flying into the air."In five seconds it went right down the creek and up and over the houses there," 76-year-old Alf Gonnella told The Australian, describing how the clumps of tea-trees "went whoomp" around his property.Victoria's Country Fire Authority warned Tuesday the town of Healesville, about 50 kilometres (31 miles) northeast of Melbourne, was still in danger from "heavy ember attack," a phenomenon survivors describe as a storm of hot coals.Victoria Harvey, a resident of Kinglake which was destroyed on Saturday, told reporters of a businessman who lost two of his children as they waited in the car while he dashed inside to collect something from his house."He apparently went to put his kids in the car, put them in, turned around to go grab something from the house, then his car was on fire with his kids in it and they burnt," she said.
Australia's native forests need fire to regenerate and survive; it is part of a cycle that the indigenous Aborigines encouraged and harnessed but which European settlers have never managed to control.