Communities at mercy of wind as firefighters battle huge new blazes

A message left by a business owner at Warburton, east of Melbourne. Photo / AP

Thousands of firefighters were late yesterday battling to maintain control of vast fires burning throughout Victoria, ahead of an expected dangerous change in wind direction.

Warnings to residents potentially in the path of the fires to prepare to defend or flee were stepped up as new outbreaks erupted and embers shooting out from behind containment lines threatened to leapfrog disaster into nearby communities.

The state Government imposed total fire bans, closed parks and forests and ordered almost 400 schools and preschool centres to close for the day.

Students in some areas had already been kept home by their parents.

Education Minister Bronwyn Pike said the schools had been closed on the advice of the Country Fire Authority, fearful that children could be trapped if fires broke containment lines.

"This is an extraordinary set of circumstances," Pike said. "We've got a tinder-dry environment, we've got existing fires and we of course are now working through the process."

Although no communities were directly threatened yesterday afternoon, despite 40C temperatures and strong, hot winds, firefighters were worried that a forecast southerly change would rapidly swing the direction of major fires in a dangerous 90-degree turn.

As units backed by earthmoving equipment worked on the ground, aircraft equipped with infra-red cameras were tracking the paths of fires covering more than 300,000ha and ringed by fronts extending for more than 1000km.

The cameras are being used to identify the areas of most intense heat.

Teams battled to control spot fires erupting from embers from the northern front of the vast Kilmore East Murridindi Complex, still burning after the Black Saturday fires that are known to have killed 210 victims.

Four major fires are burning in two parts of the complex that includes the Kinglake National Park.

Firefighters, including teams from New Zealand, the United States and Canada, were battling a fire in the Yarra Valley.

Others are raging through forest in the Bunyip Ridge area northeast of Melbourne, on Wilsons Promontory, southeast of the city, and near Daylesford and the Warburton Valley.

New concerns erupted when a fresh blaze erupted in grass and scrub near Dromona, on Mornington Peninsula, but fire teams contained the flames while others worked on smaller outbreaks in a pine plantation near the city of Portland, and others to its west.

More fires broke out at Rubicon, northeast of Melbourne, and at Warrnambool, to the southeast.

Although the Warrnambool outbreak was contained by the afternoon, nearby towns were on alert for ember attacks and elderly members of the Framlington Aboriginal Reserve were evacuated as a precaution.

Victorian Premier John Brumby yesterday renewed warnings to communities potentially under threat to prepare to defend their properties, or leave early, and urged people against unnecessary trips to bushland.

"We all need to exercise common sense," he said. "If you don't need to go out, then don't."