Over 181* dead plus over 50 missing presumed dead in Victoria and more than 1830 homes destroyed due to the terrible bushfires still burning there, with 7,000 now homeless...
[*when I first posted this yesterday, the number given was 50]
Marysville and Kinglake, among other towns, have been all but destroyed in firestorms; many who stayed to defend their homes were killed, overwhelmed by the roaring blasts that raced in, igniting everything, so fast there was virtually no warning.
It is feared that a hundred died in Marysville alone, one in five of those who lived there; 85% of all buildings in that doomed town were destroyed.
(The disaster struck 42 years to the day since the 1967 Tasmanian bushfires, and has cost more lives already than any previous bushfire, more destructive even than the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983.)
Apparently many bodies have been found in burnt-out cars, since the poor people fled their houses too late, and were engulfed by the flames: on whose souls may the Lord have mercy.
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