Word: victoria
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...what happens when beauty turns to terror? Australia found out last weekend when wildfires swept through the southeastern state of Victoria. Fires are a regular and natural occurrence in the Australian bush, but nobody was ready for the conflagration that exploded through the forests and towns north of Melbourne, and elsewhere in the state, on Saturday Feb. 7. Fueled by 117 degrees F (47 degrees C) heat and fierce northerly winds, huge fireballs burned through fields, cars, houses, stores and schools...
...Australians had gone to bed on Saturday night knowing that dozens of fires raged across southern Victoria. They knew, too, that at least a dozen lives had been lost. But, like the authorities, they had no idea of the scale of the disaster that had been unfolding over the previous few hours. Fueled by 115 F degree (46 C) heat and powerful northerly winds, the fires were laying waste to houses, schools, whole towns. On Sunday morning, as the weeping, blackened survivors emerged from the ruins telling of horrific scenes of bodies dead beside the roads and of missing relatives...
...children of a local businessman had perished in the blaze. "He [the businessman] apparently went to put the kids in the car, put them in, turned around to grab something from the house, then his car was on fire with his kids in it and they burnt," Victoria Harvey told reporters...
...death toll from these bushfires eclipses the 1983 "Ash Wednesday" fires in Victoria and South Australia which claimed 73 people. Victorian fire researcher David Packham was so concerned with the looming conditions last week that he issued a warning about the extreme danger of bushfires. He says now that a series of factors lined up to produce the "worst fire conditions" he has ever seen. Those conditions include extreme heat, dry winds, lightning strikes and arson, and vast amounts of fuel which should have been burned off under controlled conditions by authorities he says. "I woke up one night...
...fierce intensity of the fires is probably why so many people died. "The fire intensity was such that it exceeded the fires of 1939 [in which 71 people in Victoria died]," says Packham. "It was probably double that in intensity. If you are outside, the chances of you surviving are almost nil." That's because the heat radiation "can be so hot that it will cause death in a second or so. It's a shock to the body. The body completely fails. The lungs can sear inside and you die of asphyxiation as your lungs produce fluid...