Three people missing amid Victoria’s escalating bushfire crisis have been found safe.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the battle continues to control blazes that have razed at least 115 structures and more than 300,000 hectares of bush and farmland. <\/p>\n
Having declared a state of disaster in 18 local government areas, Premier Jacinta Allana says 10 major and 20 local fires are burning.<\/p>\n
Three people – initially reported as two adults and a child – had been unaccounted for since Thursday, when fire destroyed their house in the hard-hit town of Longwood, about 50km north of Melbourne.<\/p>\n
However Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush said on Saturday authorities had confirmed three adults had, in fact, been found okay.<\/p>\n
“It’s taken some time for us to fully assure ourselves that those people are now safe and well … in Benalla,” he said.<\/p>\n
Emergency Management Commissioner Tim Wiebusch said there had been significant property losses of at least 115 structures and this early estimate was expected to rise.<\/p>\n
The toll includes: Ravenswood-Harcourt (50 structures); Longwood (30); Grass Flat (20); Yarroweyah (10) and Streatham (five).<\/p>\n
Some 10,00ha of pine plantations and a “small number” of structures at Walwa have also been destroyed, and significant losses of livestock, cropping land and vineyards have occurred at most of the locations listed.<\/p>\n
“We’ve also seen impacts to critical infrastructure, in particular the Bendigo railway line that has been impacted by fire and is now closed,” Wiebusch said.<\/p>\n
There are 16 relief centres open across the state, which is under a total fire ban.<\/p>\n
Ruffy CFA Captain George Noye told AAP crews were working to clear roads after fire tore through the small town on Friday.<\/p>\n
He said the focus was now on removing debris to support the recovery process. A school was among the property losses in the town. <\/p>\n
CFA chief officer Jason Heffernan said a firefighter was hospitalised with third-degree burns to his hands, a volunteer required hospital treatment after being hit in the face by a hose and an interstate firefighter who had a medical episode was airlifted to Melbourne.<\/p>\n
“I’d like to report that all three firefighters are doing just fine,” he said.<\/p>\n
A number of crews were also forced to initiate entrapment drill procedures as a result of being overrun by fire on Friday, Heffernan said, and one CFA tanker was destroyed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three people missing amid Victoria’s escalating bushfire crisis have been found safe. Meanwhile, the battle continues to control…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39,3393],"class_list":["post-226214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-weather-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}