Authorities are breathing a sigh of relief after yesterday’s extreme fire day passed without the loss of any lives of homes in Victoria. But the massive Grampians fire is still highly active and is expected to burn for weeks. Today’s mild conditions have allowed residents to take stock of the damage to their properties, while crews continue fighting the blaze and preparing for the next spike in fire conditions.
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00:00Driving towards danger, farmer Tyne Anderson on the front line of a Boxing Day firefight.
00:08I'd never seen so many trucks launch in so quick and just start filling water out to
00:13try and stop the fire.
00:14Battling not just the flames but wind gusts of more than 70 kilometres an hour.
00:20It wasn't like probably life threatening but it was bloody hot.
00:23Pretty intense, like stressful. Yeah, very stressful. You know, it's like just waiting
00:30for something to happen all the time.
00:31Stephen Day chose to stay in Pomona.
00:33Yeah, it brought back memories of the last fire and you couldn't believe it's happening
00:38again.
00:39In February, fire destroyed more than 40 homes here. Incredibly, this blaze hasn't claimed
00:44one.
00:45This is quite dense bushland there. It's in amongst the edge of the Grampians and there
00:51are homes in there but we have no reports at this stage that residential homes have
00:55been lost.
00:58Halls Gap's residents were evacuated last week and so were 500 animals at the town zoo.
01:04The community chipping in to help staff protect them.
01:07Yeah, well, the generosity of public is what I don't like talking about. It's about the
01:11only thing that gets to me at the moment.
01:13Here at Lake Belfield, just outside of Halls Gap, there's been a procession line of choppers
01:19filling up here and then flying off to maintain that containment effort. It's been too windy
01:24over the past few days for them to be able to do this sort of work, so the calmer conditions
01:29are critical to what they're doing today.
01:32Locals are hopeful, but cautious.
01:34I got up and the smoke was gone, so I was really glad, but then I saw smoke build up
01:38again in the south and I thought, ah, you know, not again. So you're hoping it'll just
01:43go away.
01:44Lingering smoke and lingering fears.
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