Vic: Taskforce set up to investigate arsonists, ID victims

AAP General News (Australia)
02-10-2009
Vic: Taskforce set up to investigate arsonists, ID victims

By Michelle Draper and Edwina Scott

MELBOURNE, Feb 10 AAP - Any arsonists found responsible for deadly fires that killed
at least 21 people in Gippsland should be forced to pull charred bodies from cars, devastated
residents say.

Police say they're closing in on a suspect believed to have lit fires in the Gippsland
area in the days before Saturday's firestorm ripped through the Victorian region.

They expect to release a photofit image of the suspect in coming days.

Meanwhile, a police taskforce has been formed to look at every fire site and determine
if they were deliberately lit. Taskforce Phoenix will also investigate all fire-related
deaths and prepare briefs for the coroner.

The rage over so many deaths remained palpable on Tuesday, given that police consider
the Gippsland fires suspicious.

"I reckon they (any arsonists caught) should be going up there taking bodies out of
cars," said Daryl Paine, whose house in the small central Gippsland community of Callignee
was destroyed.

At least 12 of the township's 500-odd residents were killed by the 40,000 hectare Churchill fire.

"Material things are nothing, but people have died up there," Mr Paine said.

The overall death toll from Victoria's bushfires reached 173 on Tuesday. Many of the
victims perished in their cars as they tried to flee.

Di Matthews, whose daughter lost her Callignee home, called for life prison terms for
arsonists, who've been branded mass murderers by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

"There's got to be really harsh penalties. I don't know how they're going to go trying
to find them," Ms Matthews said.

"If they find them they should be severely punished, they've caused so much heartache
to so many people, definitely life in jail."

Roland Roylance successfully defended his Callignee North home and labelled arsonists "idiots".

"What can you say, there's idiots out there, always have been, always will be," he said.

Crime Department Assistant Commissioner Dannye (Dannye) Moloney will command the newly
formed Taskforce Phoenix, with 25 detectives and 100 staff.

Its work is expected to take six to 12 months to complete, and major areas of investigation
will include the fires at Bendigo, Kilmore and Wandong, Churchill in Gippsland, Marysville
and Beechworth.

Mr Moloney was involved in similar investigations after the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires.

He told reporters that two separate arson investigations were operating in the Churchill area.

"Approximately five to seven days beforehand (before Saturday's Gippsland inferno)
there were a number of other fires up in that area," he said.

"There are suspicious fires out there. The Churchill fires, as far as we can conclude
at this stage, must be considered as suspicious and that is being investigated as we speak."

He said "there may be some photofits" available soon relating to a person believed
to be involved in the fires that sprang up in the days before the devastating weekend
fire.

He urged communities to be patient and allow authorities to complete their tasks thoroughly.

"At the end of the day we hope to identify all of the victims, establish how they died,
and produce inquest briefs on every individual deceased for the coroner to determine cause
of death and other issues," he said.

He said the task ahead was made more difficult by the fact that some victims had died
in the homes of neighbours and friends to which they'd fled.

"We have houses there with unknown people within them. We've now got to identify and
track their movement," he said.

"Similarly, we have people that left their homes, drove, got trapped, left their vehicles,
pedestrians who got picked up by other motorists trying to escape this tragedy and were
killed in cars in the passenger seats.

"We must pin this all together to give the coroner the ability to actually work out
how these people came to be trapped in the fires and were killed."

Mr Moloney called on anyone with information relating to arson to contact Crime Stoppers.

AAP ees/gfr/pmu/tnf/jlw

KEYWORD: BUSHFIRES VIC ARSON 2ND WRAP

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