Firefighters battle on as toll hits 173

The Country Fire Authority in Victoria has issued a series of alerts warning of possible flare-ups across the region, as nervous residents wait and prepare for the worst.

Shifting winds have threatened to send the wildfires beyond containment lines, but authorities hope calmer weather on Tuesday will help bring the blaze under control.

That news will come as a relief to Victoria's firefighters, most of them exhausted volunteers who have been working for days with little rest.

Victorian Premier John Brumby has launched a Royal Commission to review of the way authorities handle bushfires, admitting that existing advice telling people to either leave their home early or stay on and fight the flames had proved flawed.

"There were many people who had done all of the preparations, had the best fire plans in the world and tragically it didn't save them," he told commercial radio.

Entire families wiped out

The firestorm has engulfed entire towns and wiped out families, triggering both heartache and anger after police revealed some of the blazes were set by arsonists.

Victoria Police revealed the death toll had risen to 173 from 131, with most of the new victims found in three small towns: Strathewen, Marysville and St Andrews.

Detectives say they are closing in on an arsonist thought to be responsible for the deadly Churchill-Jeeralang fire in Gippsland and other recent fires at nearby Boolarra.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said any arsonists involved were guilty of "mass murder" as police strung up crime scene tape in some of the worst hit fire zones.
 
"This is of a level of horror that few of us anticipated," Rudd said, choking with emotion as he recounted the messages of support received from around the world.

Australia's parliament suspended its normal business on Monday to mark what Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard called "one of the darkest days in Australia's peacetime history."

Fires still raging

Tales of tragedy, fear and narrow escapes transfixed the nation, as images of the towering flames dominated television and newspapers.

Huddled under a damp blanket in a puddle in a creek, as the conflagration roared overhead "like a jet engine," Sonja Parkinson was convinced she and her infant son Sam would die.

Instead, their flimsy shelter saved them from the inferno that claimed at least 32 lives in their hometown of Kinglake.

"The two front rooms were ablaze. I couldn't see. It was black," she told The Australian. "We went down to the creek and we hid. This little one was so brave under the blanket."

Two dozen fires were still burning in Victoria early Tuesday, with the main threat in the east.

The fires have so far swept through 3,000 square kilometres, leaving smouldering ruins, as authorities probe whether arsonists were to blame.

Whole towns 'crime scenes'

Police described the entire town of Marysville, one of the worst-hit areas, as a crime scene.

In nearby Kinglake, the charred bodies of four children were found huddled with that of an adult, believed to be a parent.

Police identified the four as children only from the size of their skulls, The Australian reported.

With Kinglake razed to the ground, residents further east were nervously waiting to see if their homes would suffer the same fate.

"People are nervous, we are at the mercy of the weather," said businessman James Lacey from the town of Yackandandah.

Thousands of animals - kangaroos and koalas as well as cattle and sheep - are also believed to have perished.