Sydney, December 31, SPA — Arson is suspected in a bushfire that claimed three lives on an out-back highway in Western Australia, police said Monday.
The intensity of the fire meant the bodies of the two adults and one child are yet to be recovered from the two trucks that were incinerated when the flames engulfed them late Sunday.
An 18-kilometre stretch of the Great Eastern Highway between Southern Cross and Coolgardie has been closed as firefighters battle a blaze that has blackened around 5,000 hectares of the Boorabin National Park.
Those killed were travelling in a nine-truck convoy reduced to just two when the other drivers managed to unhitch the trailers of their road trains, turn around and return to Coolgardie, according to a report of Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA).