As Google says on their Official Google Australia Blog:
“We’ve today pulled together a Flash Map, containing the latest up-to-date information about fire locations and their status from the Country Fire Authority (CFA). The Flash Map is updated in real-time from the CFA website via an RSS feed. We hope that it’s of some use to people who may be affected, to emergency services personnel, and that it takes some load off other websites which are being inundated. The map certainly makes the scale of this disaster immediately apparent.
Update at 6:10pm Victoria time: To explain the map, the number in each marker shows the number of fires at the location. A green marker means the area is called “safe” by the CFA. Yellow means “controlled”. Orange means “contained”. Red means “going”.
Update at 8:45pm. Address search functionality added.”