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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