Instead, the flimsy shelter saved them from the inferno that claimed at least 32 lives in their town of Kinglake, one of many stories of heroism and miraculous escapes to emerge from the country's worst fire disaster.

"I thought we were going to die," she told the Australian newspaper, explaining how she ran for her life as her home was engulfed.

"The two front rooms were ablaze. I couldn't see. It was black. We went down to the creek and we hid," she said.

A shallow puddle proved their salvation, as Parkinson doused a blanket and awaited their fate.

"This little one was so brave under the blanket," she said.

"We had a blanket over us in the creek and we huddled with the dog and two neighbours and two lyrebirds.

"It was shallow, a summer creek, but there was just enough water, a puddle. We sat in a muddy puddle under a wet blanket and the fire went through us."

Further to the east near Healesville, teenager Rhys Sund used a tiny tractor and trailer to save his sister Rhiannon and a group of frightened women and children from an isolated farmhouse in the path of the firestorm.

"I'm so proud of the young bloke," the 19-year-old's father Mark told Melbourne's Age newspaper. "He cut down the fences in his way and went in.

"Rhys hasn't been to bed yet. He's been fighting the fire all night."

Swimming pools, dams and even puddles became last-resort refuges for residents desperate to escape the flames, which sent showers of burning embers raining on homes.

"They call it 'ember attack', those words don't do it justice," reported the Australian newspaper's Gary Hughes, who narrowly escaped with his life when his home northeast of Melbourne was destroyed.

"It is a fiery hailstorm from hell driving relentlessly at you. The wind and the driving embers explore, like claws of a predator, every tiny gap in the house."

Christine Halls and her family ran for their lives when flames bore down their Kinglake home, barely able to see in the thick smoke.

"It was just terrifying," she said. "They say a bushfire sounds like a freight train coming, but it sounded like a freight train as big as the entire space you could see, the entire horizon.

"It was that much noise and force. The sound was incredible."

Halls and her family survived after taking shelter in a car but many others were not so lucky, with the twisted wreckage of vehicles on the outskirts of the town yielding at least six bodies.

Victims also perished in their homes, police discovering five bodies in one Kingsville house that were so charred that officers could reportedly only tell four of the victims were children from the size of their skulls.

Bendigo resident Jill Kane's boyfriend Michael Ryan had to do the unthinkable and leave her unconscious brother Mick on the ground because he could not carry him from his home in time to escape the firestorm.

"He'd got to him and grabbed him but couldn't get him the last 20 or 30 metres to the road," a devastated Kane told the Herald Sun newspaper.

Amid the tragedy there was also defiance, including 72-year-old Jean Perkins, whose Bendigo home was reduced to ashes even though her neighbour's was still standing.

"I said a couple of prayers yesterday -- 'please keep my home Lord' -- but he wanted to take mine for some reason," she said.

"But I will rebuild."

earlier related report
Police hunt arsonists amid deadly Australian wildfires
Amid the shock and grief over Australia's deadly wildfires, anger grew Monday as police hunted shadowy arsonists believed to have started some of the infernos that have killed more than 100 people.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described them as "mass murderers" and a state premier called them "terrorists," but who they are and why they do it remains something of a mystery -- even to experts.

"We think that bushfire arsonists are motivated by different reasons from other arsonists, like people who burn down buildings," National Australian University research fellow Damon Muller told AFP.

"Most arson tends to be motivated by things like revenge or financial reward -- insurance fraud, those sorts of things.

"But there is no real money to be made in bushfire arson so it doesn't tend to be financially motivated," he said.

Muller is also the author of a recent report for the government's Australian Institute of Criminology, which said half of the nation's 20,000 to 30,000 bushfires each year are deliberate.

"We think bushfire arsonists tend to be motivated by psychological motives -- there is something they get out of lighting a fire, some sort of psychological need is fulfilled by it," he said.

This might be a need for excitement, or recognition or control over their environment -- and for some it is the thrill of watching firefighters and emergency services respond to their fire.

Two people -- a 31-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy -- have been charged with arson after wildfires raged through southeastern Australia, killing at least 128 and destroying more than 750 homes, police said Monday.

Neither of the fires they are accused of starting in New South Wales state killed anybody, but police suspect arsonists were also behind some of the major blazes in neighbouring Victoria state, where all of the fatalities have occurred.

Victoria state police commissioner Christine Nixon said all bushfire areas will be treated as crime scenes to determine if arson was involved.

"At this stage we have a team at the fire at Churchill, in the Gippsland Valley, which is certainly one that we believe was deliberately lit," Nixon said.

"Our fire experts and our own investigators have suggested that the way that it happened, how fast that it happened, that there is good evidence to believe that it was lit."

Forensic investigators have also begun work in the Kinglake area where more than 30 people died and hundreds of homes were destroyed.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Monday arsonists were guilty of mass murder.

"What do you say about anyone like that -- there are no words to describe it other than mass murder," Rudd said.

Arsonists, who took advantage of tinder-box conditions amid a heatwave and high winds, could face life in jail if they are convicted on murder charges, police say.

But Muller said one of the difficulties in dealing with bushfire arsonists is that a lot of them are never caught -- "so we really don't know a lot about them."

Bushfire arsonists who got their thrills from watching the efforts to control what they had started could do so from an armchair in front of the television, or by hanging around the firefighters themselves, he said.

Sometimes their obsession with fires leads them to try to sign up as volunteer firefighters, but the fire services are aware of this and have several screening mechanisms to keep them out.

The question of whether arsonists whose fires kill people felt remorse or pleasure was difficult to answer, Muller said.

"Some probably don't have a good understanding of the consequences of their own actions, but there are probably some also who don't have any real regard for their victims.

"Part of the thing with bushfire arson is that the offenders will be somewhat removed from the victims, they may not see the victims."

Share This Article With Planet Earth

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Related Links
Forest and Wild Fires - News, Science and Technology

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News