WHITTLESEA, Australia — Disaster teams found charred bodies on roadsides and in crashed cars — grim signs of the futile attempt to flee raging wildfires fed by 60-mph winds, record heat and drought that caught even fire-savvy Australians by surprise.
As the death toll rose Tuesday to 173 in Australia’s worst wildfire disaster, suspicions that some of the 400 blazes were arson led police to declare crime scenes in some of the incinerated towns, Victoria police said.
The fires near Melbourne in southeastern Australia destroyed more than 750 homes, left 5,000 people homeless and burned 1,100 square miles of land, the Victoria Country Fire Service said.
Whole forests were reduced to leafless, charred trunks. Farmland was in ashes.
The scale of the disaster shocked a nation that endures deadly firestorms every few years. Officials said panic and the freight-train speed of the walls of flames probably accounted for the unusually high death toll.
“It was very quick and ferocious and took everyone by surprise,” said Jack Barber, who with his wife, a neighbor, six cats and a dog sought refuge with five other people on a cricket field surrounded by trees in Kinglake.
“All around us was 100-foot flames ringing the oval, and we ran where the wind wasn’t. It was swirling all over the place,” he said. “For three hours, we dodged the wind.”
Firefighters on Monday battled more than a dozen blazes that burned out of control across Victoria state, although conditions were much cooler than on Saturday. Forecasters said temperatures would rise later this week, posing a risk of flare-ups.
Blazes have been burning for weeks across several states in southern Australia, common for this time of year. But the worst drought in a century in the south had left forests extra dry, and the temperature Saturday was 117 degrees, the relative humidity was 7 percent, and the wind was gusting to 50 mph.
“I cannot fathom in my mind anything more hellish, firewise,” said Jim Andrews, senior meteorologist at . He added that some of Australia’s vegetation, such as eucalyptus and gum trees, contains flammable aromatic oils.
Flags across Australia flew at half-staff, and Parliament suspended its normal sessions to hear emotional condolence speeches by legislators.
Attorney General Robert McClelland said anyone found to have deliberately set fires could face murder charges.
Victoria Police Commissioner Christine Nixon said investigators had strong suspicions that one of the deadly blazes — known as the Churchill fire after a ruined town — was arson, and it could not be ruled out for others.
At relief centers, survivors wept and embraced as they reunited with neighbors and looked for loved ones. An impromptu message board at Whittlesea Community Center displayed yellow sticky notes.
“Lisa, call me. We are worried about you,” one read. “Rob, Tash, Jorja and Leslie, Where are you? Call mom and dad,” read another.
Many survivors said the speed of the fires caught them off guard, and even those who had planned to evacuate found themselves forced to outrun flames sooner than expected.
Donna Bateman, whose home in Kinglake West burned to the ground with her pets inside, said firefighters barely had a chance.
“Everyone has a fire plan. People prepare for this for months,” she said. “But the fire service told me that a fire that usually takes a day to travel had traveled three-quarters of a mile in an hour to my property. Now everything is gone.”
Mark Strubing said he and a companion were unable to outrace the flames, so they took refuge in a drainage pipe under the road as his property outside Kinglake was destroyed.
“Mate, I’ve looked at this pipe before, you’d never ever crawl under there. It’s full of spiders and all sorts of uglies,” he told Nine Network TV news.
He said they rolled around in the water in the pipe to wet their clothing as flames started licking inside the pipe.
“It was a terrible dark place to go, but it felt pretty good at the time because I’d be dead right now if I didn’t,” he said.
