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 caused by 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.
Officials said panic and the freight-train speed of the walls of flames probably accounted for the unusually high death toll.
Firefighters battled more than a dozen blazes that burned out of control across Victoria state, although conditions were much cooler than 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 time of year. But the worst drought in a century in the south had left forests extra dry, and Saturday’s temperature 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 accuweather.com.
Attorney General Robert McClelland said anyone found to have deliberately set fires could face murder charges.
Arson is not uncommon in Australian wildfires. Of the estimated 60,000 fires in forests and other vegetation each year, about half are deliberately lit or are suspicious, the government-funded Institute of Criminology said earlier this month.
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.
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