He was a boy of about 10, with the bluest of blue eyes.

They are eyes that Mark, a firefighter from Flowerdale, will never forget.

He was found near a ute, the vehicle doomed, like so many others fleeing the inferno. Along the road lay the bodies of another boy and a woman, believed to have been his mother and brother.

On Sunday, when firefighters scoured the charred town of Flowerdale, of which very little remains, these were among the first bodies found.

''They must have panicked and the car went straight into the tree. They had no hope whatsoever,'' Mark says.

''They'd got out of the car. One kid would have been about 10. He was lying on his back. His eyes were just wide open and he had the bluest, bluest eyes ... Then I thought about my son ... what can you do?

''The other boy was about six. The mum was crouched with her hands over her head.''

Mark is a man with a rock-hard handshake, a no-nonsense manner and a ready smile. But the grizzly reality of what he found makes him roar in pain and weep.

''There was nothing anybody could do. It [the fire] was the fastest thing I'd ever seen,'' Mark says. ''My son is worried sick about daddy and I'm fine but those poor people ...''

But Mark is not really fine. His house, like most in Flowerdale, has been obliterated in the blaze, along with his car, which went up in flames outside the local CFA station.

He's had ''20 minutes' worth of sleep here and there'' yet he continues to work alongside his mates. ''When everyone's coming out, we're coming in. We're here to protect people's properties, make sure they're safe, that's what it's all about.''

The army's Victorian Search Task Group was also brought in yesterday to check properties and look for victims' remains. It supported Victoria Police's Disaster Victim Identification Unit, charged with the hardest of tasks.

Of a 169-strong crew scattered around four bushfire zones, 102 of them came to Flowerdale, the hardest-hit town.

Major Steve Whitehead said, ''We are hearing reports of missing people and people fleeing into the hills there is a large number of people unaccounted for.

''We are going through every property and knocking on doors if it's undamaged.''

Locals say the fates of as many as 30per cent of residents is unknown, but with phones not working, it's difficult to know who survived.

The soldiers are checking creeks, culverts and water tanks, too, after reports that desperate locals may have sought shelter in the water, hoping to be saved.