After the bushfires: Australia counts the cost

Wildfires rage in Jeeralong West, 200km south-east of Melbourne, Australia. Authorities say they will rethink evacuation policies – currently residents themselves decide whether to leave their homes or stay and defend their property Photograph: AP

Landscape turns orange and smoke fills the sky during a blaze in Churchill, Victoria Photograph: Rhys Smith/Newspix/Rex Features

A Boeing 737 flies by a massive smoke plume over Kinglake Photograph: S Mcevoy/Newspix /Rex Features

Scorched farmland shows the extent of the wildfires which destroyed houses and farms in the Bunyip regions of Gippsland, east of Melbourne Photograph: Paul Crock/AFP/Getty Images

A narrow dirt road divides grapevines from burnt-out scrub in the Yarra Valley Photograph: Luis Ascui/Getty Images

A white horse and two goats in a field burnt out by bushfires in the town of Flowerdale, 80km north of Melbourne Photograph: Mick Tsikas/REUTERS

Sheep struggle to find food in a burnt-out paddock after a bushfire swept through Mudgeegonga in the Victoria Alps Photograph: TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP/Getty Images

A water-dumping helicopter flies over a fire at Chum Creek, Healseville, north-east of Melbourne Photograph: Rick Rycroft/AP

Beechworth fires, Mudgeegonga region. A burnt-out car parked beside a blackened, twisted tree on a destroyed property Photograph: David Caird/Newspix/Rex Features

Jeeralong West, 200km south-east of Melbourne, Australia Photograph: AP

Burnt trees top a ridge in the hills in Kinglake, Victoria Photograph: Mark Dadswell/Getty Images

Kangaroos explore a charred landscape in the aftermath of a bushfire at Chum Creek near Healesville Photograph: Luis Ascui/Getty Images

Dead fish float in the Marysville trout farm, north-east of Melbourne Photograph: AP

Two firefighters survey the scorched landscape following the devastating bush fires in Bendigo, Australia Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

A ring-tailed possum saved from the bushfires in Gippsland is cared for at the Mountain Ash Wildlife Centre in Rawson, 170km east of Melbourne, where workers were scrambling to help possums, kangaroos and lizards. Millions of animals died in the blazes Photograph: AP

Cheyenne Tree treats a Koala nicknamed Sam, saved from the bushfires in Gippsland, at the Mountain Ash Wildlife Centre in Rawson. See the moment the koala bear was rescued here Photograph: Stringer/AP