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128 killed in deadliest-ever Australian wildfires
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-09 07:58

"It does appear that people have been taken by surprise by how fast this fire has come," Victoria police Sgt. Creina O'Grady told Australian Broadcasting Corp.


The remains of a properties destroyed by bushfires are seen in the town of Kinglake, 55km (34 miles) northeast of Melbourne February 8, 2009. [Agencies]

Police and fire officials reached on Sunday the town of Marysville and several hamlets in the Kinglake district, both about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Melbourne. They found the area utterly devastated.

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At Marysville, a picturesque hilly district that attracts hikers and tourists and is home to about 800 people, up to 90 percent of buildings were in ruins, witnesses said. Police said two people died there.

"Marysville is no more," Senior Constable Brian Cross said as he manned a checkpoint on a road leading into the town at Healesville.

At least 29 of the deaths were from the Kinglake area. Many residents in hard hit areas said the fires were moving so fast that they hit without warning, something that could have contributed to the unusually high death toll.

But so far officials said they were at a loss to explain why so many people have died. The sheer intensity of the firestorm Saturday may have caused panic among even veterans of wildfires.

Mandy Darkin said she was working at a restaurant in Kinglake "like nothing was going on" until they were suddenly told to go home.

"I looked outside the window and said: 'Whoa, we are out of here. This is going to be bad,'" Darkin said. "I could see it coming. I just remember the blackness and you could hear it, it sounded like a train."

Some fire crews in the same area filled their trucks from ponds and sprayed down spot fires. There were no other signs of life.