Arsonists blamed for spread of Sydney bushfires

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Thousands of animals perish in the flames

Ron Allen is one of the lucky ones. The bushfire that destroyed six houses in his street in the Blue Mountains town of Warrimoo left half of his home standing.

"At least we didn't lose the lot," he said yesterday, contemplating the black, peeling walls, charred ceiling fan and remains of a small Christmas tree in the living room.

As more than 100 fires continued to burn across New South Wales yesterday, police set up a task force to hunt for arsonists believed to have started many of the blazes. The acting state premier, Andrew Refshauge, said those responsible would face the maximum penalty of 14 years in jail. "We see arson as an atrocious thing," he said.

The bushfires have brought misery to thousands of Australians over the festive period, burning down 150 houses, closing road and rail links and cutting electricity supplies to 12,000 properties. About 4,000 people have fled their homes, some of them spending Christmas in makeshift evacuation centres. Sydney was choked by a thick blanket of smoke yesterday and its beaches were covered in ash. Air pollution was said to have reached near-record levels.

The city's southern and western suburbs have been badly hit, as have towns and villages along the New South Wales coast and large swaths of the rural hinterland.

A spokesman for the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, John Winter, said: "We're basically looking at the entire Sydney fringe being an exposure."

Many of the fires started in the Blue Mountains, a World Heritage-listed area 40 miles west of Sydney. In Warrimoo, walls collapsed in the intense heat of a fire that surged out of a gully and raced through Mr Allen's street in just 10 minutes. Piles of bricks and strips of twisted metal littered the pavement yesterday.

Around the corner, Cecily and Lance Jackson combed the ash and smouldering rubble of their home. They were thankful to escape with their lives after taking refuge in the laundry just before flames engulfed the house.

Mrs Jackson said: "We saw this wall of fire coming towards us. We crouched down until the laundry door blew in and there were embers in the room. When the flames broke through two doors and into the passageway, we decided to open the front door and run."

Yesterday she searched for her engagement ring in what was once her bedroom. "This is where my bedside table was, I'm hoping the ring will be there," she said.

Cooler weather gave some respite to firefighters tackling the blazes for the third consecutive day, but stronger winds are forecast for the weekend and no rain is expected before next week.

The revelation that nature may not be entirely to blame has angered Australians. The tabloid Daily Telegraph called the wildfires "Devil's work" and described "how arsonists put NSW to the torch". Lightning strikes caused some fires, but police suspect that up to 40 were deliberately lit.

The task force, which will include forensic scientists and psychological experts, will oversee local investigations into the causes of individual fires. No arrests have yet been made.

Mr Refshauge said: "The idea that somebody should deliberately light a fire is almost beyond comprehension. Life is difficult enough in Australia, we are prone to bushfires. For somebody to add to that is just unbelievable."

While some people may have set the fires, others are exploiting them. In the Helensburgh district, south of Sydney, houses left empty after families fled have been burgled. In Wollongong, a former coal-mining town to the south, thieves entered a fire station and stole the wallets of three firefighters who were out tackling blazes.

The fires – the worst since 1994, when four people were killed – swept towards Sydney on Christmas Day and spread from north to south along the city's western perimeter, whipped by high winds. Fire units have rushed from one outbreak to the next, fighting the fires valley by valley and ridge by ridge. They are thought to have saved 11,000 properties. Helicopters, hovering in some cases just a few feet above the trees, have been dropping water on the flames after filling their tanks from lakes and swimming pools.

Hundreds of thousands of acres of land have been ravaged, including much of the world's second oldest national park, on Sydney's southern fringe. The Royal National Park was expected to be completely burnt out by the weekend.

The Insurance Council of Australia has calculated the cost of the fires so far at about A$20m (about £7.7m), but warned the final figure could be higher.