Australia feels urgency for fire alert system

A view across the torched landscape and burnout house in Phesant Creek some 100km north of Melbourne yesterday. Arsonists lit a wildfire that killed 21 people in Australia and are suspected of starting another that razed a whole town and may have left up to 100 dead, police said Thursday. Photo: AFP

Australian police detained two suspects Thursday in connection with the country's worst-ever wildfires, as the government pledged to push through a national fire alert system after thousands were caught off-guard by the infernos.
The two suspects were taken in after they were reported acting suspiciously in an area burned out by last weekend's fires, but it was unclear if the two are suspected of setting fires, or of some other wrongdoing after the fires started.
Authorities say some of the fires that ravaged Victoria state last weekend and killed at least 181 people were the result of arson. Officials said the death toll could exceed 200.
Detectives responding to a tip found the men near Yea, which is about 20km north of Marysville, a town utterly wrecked by a blaze Saturday and where officials say up to 100 people were killed.
"We've picked them up and it will now take us a little bit of time just to work through and establish what's been going on," Deputy Police Commissioner Simon Overland told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Meanwhile, privacy laws and bickering between state officials over funding had snarled the plan for an alert system for years. But the country's worst fires in history have added new urgency.