The Inferno by Christine Kenneally
The New Yorker, October 26, 2009
"The death toll rose from fifteen to a hundred and seventy-three. It was clear that some bodies would never be recovered, having been effectively cremated. Others were found unburned in positions that suggested that they had simply dropped dead while running from the flame; the radiant heat from a bushfire, which can ignite mattresses and curtains through closed windows, can kill at a considerable distance more or less instantaneously. Survivors with even more excruciating stories. As people had escaped, they had seen they neighbors bodies lying in the streets. A few days after the fire, police found a house with the remains of nine bodies: eight adults had formed a protective huddle around a baby."
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