Fires

Ginny Harmon, burnt-red hair teased into her trademark bouffant, hits the brakes of her white company minivan along nearly every street. She pauses for seconds, sometimes minutes, to talk about what once was. There were red roses climbing up verandas, she says, elaborate brickwork, antique lampposts, fireplaces and fish ponds. Number 60 was where her hairstylist lived.

Raymond Lee Oyler, who is charged with setting the October 2006 Esperanza fire that killed five firefighters, was a serial arsonist whose girlfriend once gave him an ultimatum to stop setting fires or she would leave him, prosecutors said Thursday. In opening statements at Oyler's trial, Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Hestrin told jurors that the 38-year-old auto mechanic had set more than 20 fires in the San Gorgonio Pass area in the months before the fatal blaze.

Wildfires roared through southeastern Australia on Saturday, killing at least 49 people and destroying homes, farmland and forests, officials said. The army was called in to help firefighters and volunteers battle the blazes. Officials said the death toll could rise as fires continued burning out of control early today in the southern state of Victoria, in the country's worst wildfire disaster in years. At least 640 houses have been destroyed, officials said.

At least 130 people have died in howling wildfires in Australia, so fierce that they incinerated people trying to flee in their cars, sent towering walls of flames sweeping through small towns and sparked a new debate over whether homeowners should be allowed to stay to try to protect their property.

As a wildfire headed toward Mountain View Estates mobile home park near Chatsworth several years ago, the emergency response of the park's manager and assistant manager was simple, Gary Gibson recalls: They left, leaving him and hundreds of other residents to fend for themselves. "They abandoned the park knowing the fire was bearing down on us," said Gibson, 62, who was later evacuated by sheriff's deputies. "It was a terrible thing to do, leaving the elderly and infirm behind to face that risk."

Despite a rising death toll from wildfires, the premier of the southern Australian province ravaged by the blazes defended the policy of allowing homeowners to stay and protect their homes. Police have confirmed 181 people died in the fires, with at least 50 still missing. Officials have said the death toll could reach 300. More than 900 homes have been destroyed, and 7,000 people have registered for assistance with the Red Cross, officials said.

Pamela Phoenix had five seconds to flee her home of 30 years where she'd raised her two daughters. That was more time than many here got. She threw her handbag into the car and tracked the onrushing bush fire in her rear-view mirror: "A fireball chasing me," as she recalled it. Although Phoenix made it out, many of her neighbors in the Kinglake region, tucked into the Great Dividing Range northeast of Melbourne, did not.

Bells tolled today across Australia as the nation paused to remember the 209 people killed during a firestorm that raged across the state of Victoria two weeks ago. Thousands gathered on a late summer day for a nationally televised memorial service. Church bells pealed along the Yarra River, and in the Rod Laver Arena, attendees shook tiny hand bells.

One person was killed and 17 others suffered minor injuries Saturday afternoon when an apartment fire of unknown origin forced the dramatic evacuation through thick smoke of about 80 disabled and elderly residents from a seven-story, 100-unit complex in Inglewood.

Three people were pulled out of a burning car Wednesday after they apparently set themselves on fire at a crowded intersection near Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Chinese authorities tried to downplay the possibility that it was a political protest and said the occupants had come to the capital to "voice personal grievance."