Yahoo News 21 May 09;
MELBOURNE (AFP) – Australia's deadly wildfires generated energy equivalent to 1,500 Hiroshima atomic bombs, a judicial inquiry into the disaster was told Thursday.
Melbourne University fire behaviour specialist Kevin Tolhurst said the fires, which killed 173 people in February, created their own weather systems, whipping up winds of 120 kilometres (74 miles) an hour.
When the high levels of fuel on the ground were taken into account, the force from the fires equalled "1,500 atomic bombs the size of Hiroshima," Tolhurst said.
"It's an enormous amount of energy," he added.
Tolhurst said the swirling winds generated by the fires were strong enough to snap tree trunks in half and send burning embers in all directions, causing spot fires up to 35 kilometres away.
He said attempting to control such an inferno was impossible.
"There's no way you would be able to stop the fire," he said.
Entire towns and more than 2,000 homes were razed in early February as record high temperatures, strong winds and drought-parched countryside combined to create the worst fire disaster in Australia's history.
The commission, headed by former Supreme Court judge Bernard Teague, is examining how the blazes raced out of control so quickly and why the death toll was so high.
It is due to present interim findings by August.
The southwestern Japanese city of Hiroshima was obliterated by a US nuclear bomb on August 6, 1945, near the end of World War II, killing more than 140,000 people.
