help for fire victims...rally, page-85

News from my friend:

thank you all for your good wishes - and may I ask you ALL please to dig deep and give to the national fund which I believe Mr. Rudd is organising.

I hate to say so - but there is a list of 400 - repeat 400 - people missing posted at just one of the refuge centres as of this morning - put up by their loved ones.

Now some of them WILL appear OK - as there are no phones, power, food, drink etc in Kinglake and surrounds. All roads are roadblocked. There is a desperate need for help folks. Other areas, of course, have also suffered losses - but three quarters of homes lost have been in Kinglake and surrounds. All deaths are being treated as crime scenes, as arson has not been ruled out.

But this awful death toll is going to increase dramatically. I have heard of 8 more people this morning who are dead, yet have not yet been officially announced.

If you can even give 50c or $1 - anything will help these poor people who have lost family and homes.

I repeat that my family did all possible to implement their fire plan (even generator operated sprinklers on roof, etc. NOTHING could have saved these homes - this thing was so huge fast and ferocious. My daughter could still hear the noise of the fire ringing in her ears yesterday! She said it sounded like a screaming dragon. Their garden just caught alight spontaneously - without any advance embers - such was the immense heat.

If you saw the devastation - and the grief - and the hopelessness of some people left with nothing - you would cry your eyes out.

My phone has not stopped ringing - and as I write I have just taken a call telling me that one of my daughter's closest friends and her husband have died. They were last seen by some neighbours packing their trailer in the process of evacuating. I also repeat that the township had NO warning - no official posting on the CFA site to tell them it was imminent - this thing came on them so fast it WAS like an atom bomb attack. Some people have said to me "but why didn't they" - this or that -
believe me - this thing was so vicious that it is a miracle anyone at all suirvived - no matter how "well prepared" they were. A bit like being "well prepared" for a bullet.