Works are taking place across Victoria to repair and replace infrastructure impacted by suppression activities during the fire response, including fencing that was cut, gates that were damaged and water that was used.
CFA volunteers and staff, Fire Forest Management Victoria, VICSES, Coast Guard, Fire Rescue Victoria and contractors have worked, and continue to work, out in fire-affected grounds.
The reinstatement of soil and stabilisation of control lines on private property, involving the use of dozers and graders to push back soil and apply erosion control measure to protect the land and water quality, remains a priority for the CFA.
CFA’s vegetation management team leader and deputy incident controller/stabilisation manager for the CFA’s Seymour Incident Control Centre, Daniel Idczak, said the Longwood-Berrys Lane fire was the largest fire the CFA led the response to this season, impacting more than 1800 properties, which were mostly on private land.
“The perimeter of the fire is 540km and we have mapped around 889km of control lines, so it was a very large fire,” Mr Idczak said.
“We’ve assessed all that area aerially and crews are working on all sectors of the fire footprint, with around 60 per cent of the control line now stabilised.”
The CFA is working through properties on a request basis.
Mr Idczak said some landowners might not want parts of their property repaired.
“People often ask us to leave the control line in place as they want to maintain it as a permanent asset going forward,” he said.
“We’ve received really positive feedback from residents as a result of these stabilisation works, some have made permanent changes to their properties to allow easier access for emergency services in the future if required.”
He said the CFA was moving as quickly as it could to get to properties.
The authority is also working with communities to repair a football oval that was used for staging areas, cleaning halls used for community hubs and replacing water used for aviation purposes.
The emergency stabilisation works at Longwood are predicted to be completed in the next couple of months.
Fire-impacted landholders can submit a form to request repairs to damages at their property that were a direct result of fire suppression activities from emergency services via the Fire Forest Management Victoria website.
The form can be found here.
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