00:00 Well it's been a very anxious wait for residents in parts of Victoria's West, some of whom
00:06 may have lost their homes as a ferocious bushfire swept through the Grampians.
00:11 Fire crews are currently assessing the extent of the damage in Pomona, which is a small
00:15 town on the eastern edge of the national park.
00:18 One of the complications is that the fire is still burning, so residents who evacuated
00:23 in the past day or so actually haven't been let back into the town yet to see whether
00:27 or not their homes are still standing.
00:29 However, the local mayor Bob Sanders has told the ABC that he believes the number of homes
00:33 that have been at the very least damaged is significant.
00:37 The fire in Pomona was one of two that burned through the national park yesterday.
00:42 Both are believed to have been started by dry lightning strikes and then they were fanned
00:46 by the hot and gusty weather, which created conditions that fire authorities described
00:50 as some of the worst that the state has seen in a number of years.
00:54 Those crews worked through the night battling the blazes trying to contain them.
00:58 They're both still burning out of control, but they have been downgraded from an emergency
01:02 level to a watch and act level earlier today.
01:05 The good news is that fire authorities say the fire risk is expected to drastically reduce
01:10 in the coming days.
01:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Comments