At least eight people including two children died as bushfires fanned by searing temperatures and high winds raged through parts of South Australia state Tuesday, threatening towns and destroying properties. Police said eight people had been confirmed killed, but a number of others were still unaccounted for and the toll could rise. At least one fire-fighter was taken to hospital suffering from bad burns.
An adult and two children died as the fire swept a farming property near the tiny township of Wanilla on South Austrralia's rugged Eyre Peninsula.
Two adults died nearby as the car in which they were believed to have been travelling was engulfed by flames and another three people were found burned to death in a vehicle near the seaside township of Poonidie near Port Lincoln.
"The latest death toll has reached eight," police chief inspector Malcolm Schluter said.
A major fire burning along a front of several kilometres on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula broke out Tuesday morning. Another was burning near Mount Osmond, an outlying suburb of the state capital Adelaide.
Neither had been brought under control by late Tuesday, but the fire authorities said they were confident the blazes could be controlled on Wednesday morning following an easing of weather conditions.
The worst possible conditions were created by strong, gusting winds and temperatures that topped 44 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in some parts of South Australia, already tinder-dry after years of severe drought.
In Adelaide the temperature rose on Tuesday above 41.
Other fires were reported in South Australia's south-east, an area in which Australia's worst bushfires, the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires, claimed 28 lives. A further 47 people died in the 1983 fires in neighbouring Victoria state.
Police and fire-fighters then deployed water bombers and numerous fire-fighting units in a bid to control the blazes.
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