 At first it looks like an aerial view from a plane... but then you realize how big this area really is! This satellite view shows a huge chunk of the whole continent is on fire!
 Millions of native animals may have died in Victorian bushfires! MORE than a million native animals may have been killed in the Victorian bushfires, a wildlife expert says. The massive effort to rescue animals caught in the fire has begun with triage centres set up to assess injured wildlife at staging posts at Kilmore, Whittlesea and Redesdale near Bendigo. The animals are then being treated and assessed by vets at nearby shelters, who make the agonising decision about which ones need to be euthanased. Those animals still may have to wait several weeks before walking out of fire-affected forest, said Gayle Chappell from the Hepburn Wildlife Shelter. Ms Chappell is among those working to rescue the animals and says the extent of the devastation may never be known. "It (the animal death toll) will be in the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions," Ms Chappell said. "We are not just talking the animals we are familiar with, there are gliders and all sorts of possums, antechinus (a mouse-like marsupial), bandicoots, birds - there is so much wildlife. "It is devastating, the actual size of the destruction is devastating to a number of wildlife populations." It is feared endangered populations of gliders, owls and lizards may be among the dead. For those that have survived, the recovery process will be long and slow. "They have lost their homes too and they are not going to be rebuilt in a year or two years, it is a much longer-term picture," Ms Chappell said. "You can't reconstruct a forest." The fires also destroyed four wildlife shelters including Stella Reid's Wildhaven shelter at Kinglake. Ms Chappell said Ms Reid escaped with her life, but the animals were not so lucky. "It has been a real blow for everybody I think. That is what has really brought it home for everybody, hearing that Stella Reid's place was totalled and all her animals ... they weren't able to get any animals out at all." Human Toll Nears 200
 People gather and mourn the dead. "It happened so fast..." they say. For many, if they heard the fire approaching -- it was already too late for them. Lives are shattered. Bushfire victims are still coming to grips with the scale of the disaster. Authorities are expecting to find more bodies as the devastating bushfires continue to rage across Victoria. Fires rage as death toll rises to 173. For almost a decade, as the fear of the 2012 "doomsday" and Global Warming draw ever nearer, many Americans and Europeans have considered Australia, the land "down under" to be a kind of "safe zone." It is believed that a nuclear war would make life impossible in the Northern Hemisphere and that Australia -- the "land of Oz" -- would likely be the last bastion of the human race. Now that is the subject of irony. Global Warming has chosen to show its deadly effects on this gentle continent with sustained droughts and a heatwave as huge and persistent as the land is ancient. Daily temperatures reaching upward to 120F... 130F... and 140F! So hot that residents of one small farmhouse in Georgetown, South Australia, must hold up in a small bedroom, huddled around an air conditioner with sheets and towels wedged in the doors and windows to keep the cool in and the scorching heat out.
"When we have to use the loo (toilet) or someone is hungry, we usually wait as long as possible before opening the bedroom door. Once open, the intense heat from the house hits you like an oven! All you can think about is running back inside and getting close to the air conditioner." Other stories are descriptive of the dangerous heat... like the ties on railroad tracks spontaneously bursting into flames because of the kerocene preservative... of of having to wear thick gloves when you hold the metal pump to fill your auto with petro. Even going outside for a few minutes could cause a severe sunburn. But nature had more in store for this land. The recent drought had made a ready supply of dry grass and when this caught on fire, the usually flat terrain exploded with firestorms that generated winds up to 120 MPH! The wall of flames was driven across the prairies and consumed towns, farms and villages in its way -- without giving a warning to the residents. The fires are continuing and so the exact toll will not be known. The Prime Minister has declared this the worst natural disaster in Australia's history -- a fact that is made even worse when it is suspected that many fires seem to have been inteltionally set.
"It wasn't even a wall of fire... it was like a tsunami of bright heat that engulfed everything... the heat is so intense that your mouth and nose want to close up rather than let it in... you don't even sweat -- the water from your skin evaporates as soon as it comes out..." 
Entire towns were reduced to ashes with many bodies still being recovered. The dead are not just old. They are children and families who were caught by surprise with little change to escape.
A fire so hot that it reduced some cars to blobs of melted metal!
 Residents can build again but many still mourn their dead neighbors who perished in their homes. "All my neighbors are dead... my friends, they're all dead!"
 "When we heard it coming it sounded like a train." The winds were so fast and the air so hot that many people tried unsuccessfully to speed away in their cars -- only to be overtaken by heat and incinerated in their vehicles. The country's blood now filled its holes, like metal in a mold; bodies dissolved -- like butter left in the sun. But, as it always has done, the land endures.
Comments: Good afternoon, I have noticed somethime very odd in the photos posted on your Australia on Fire! article. In the photos of the burnt down houses and burnt out cars the trees and vetagation surrounding them are completely untouched. Mark Sylvester
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