KEY POINTS:
Stephen Collins is manager of a resort in Marysville which has been wiped from the map with up to 11 dead.
He told The Australian: "I asked one friend about her dad and she just looked blankly at me and said, 'He's gone'."
Christine Halls was with a family, including an infant boy, trying to escape the blaze.
She told The Australian: "It was just terrifying. They say a bushfire sounds like a freight train coming, but it sounded like a freight train as big as the entire space you could see, the entire horizon. It was that much noise and force. The sound was incredible.
"And this little one was so brave, under the blanket. We had a blanket over us in the creek and we huddled with the dog and two neighbours and two lyrebirds."
Dr John Coleridge, a trauma specialist at Melbourne's Alfred Hospital, compared the aftermath to the Bali bombings.
He told the Melbourne Age about the victims: "Most of these people have burns, and they range from minor - just the soles of their feet running away through embers - to people who have got major life-threatening burns, and unfortunately there are some people who will not survive.
"I've heard sad stories of flames going over cars and maybe one person surviving and being brought in and the others not surviving, and I suspect today they will find lots of cars with people who haven't survived."
- NZHERALD STAFF
