00:00That means that any fires that are in our landscape today already or those that may start will be
00:05uncontrollable, unpredictable and will be very fast moving. The areas that are in catastrophic
00:12fire danger rating today is the Wimmera, the southwest, north country and north central
00:19districts. The remainder of the state is in extreme fire danger rating so anywhere in the state today
00:26will be challenging and difficult conditions for our firefighters. With the winds that we'll see
00:31today there will be periods where our aviation fleet that is over 70 aircraft today will not
00:37be able to fly and so we are reminding communities you need to heed the warnings to leave now. If
00:44you're in a bushfire prone area a bushland area of Victoria our strongest advice is leave now if you
00:51haven't left already. If you don't leave now it could result in your life being lost.
00:59Firefighters have been working very hard in these challenging and difficult conditions overnight on
01:04a range of fires. This morning we've had 40 fires already in the landscape 30 of those remain active.
01:12As a result of the dynamic and challenging conditions on the Longwood fire I can now
01:17confirm that we have had community and residential property losses. We know that we have had the
01:24community centre and the telephone exchange damaged or lost at the township of Ruffey and in and around
01:31the Ruffey township there are multiple homes that have been lost to fire. We can't confirm those numbers
01:38at this stage it's still too dangerous to get in and on the ground but we have seen through our aerial
01:44intelligence gathering helicopters that we have lost multiple properties in and around the Ruffey area.
01:51On the Wawa fire in the north of the state we've also seen damage to a significant pine plantation there.
01:581,200 to 1,600 hectares of pine plantation in 22 years of age so well matured pine plantation
02:06has also been lost but at this stage there have not been any property
02:10losses reported as a result of that significant fire. But overnight with lightning we have seen a range
02:17of fires pop up across the state particularly in Gippsland and Chief Fire Officer Chris Hardman will
02:24speak about that shortly. Obviously our thoughts are very much with the communities in and around the
02:30Longford fire at the moment where those property losses have occurred and we will get around and support
02:36those communities today and the Premier will speak more about that in a moment. Our Fire Chiefs will
02:42also speak about the potential impact zone maps for the two significant fires being the Longwood fire
02:48and also the Walworth-Mount Lawson fire. However we do have a number of warnings already in place.
02:56So for the Longwood fire there are two emergency warnings and two watch and act warnings in place already
03:03for that fire and people need to heed those warnings. For the Walworth fire we have three emergency warnings
03:10and four watch and act warnings in place and again for the communities in and around that fire you need
03:16to heed those warnings now. We also have advice warnings out for a complex of fires down in the Gippsland region.
03:23Late yesterday we saw 92 personnel from New South Wales fire rescue sorry fire rural fire service join us
03:34from New South Wales to bolster our efforts here in Victoria and they've been deployed out to the
03:40Longwood fire this morning. We've also requested an additional 117 interstate personnel that will arrive
03:48on Saturday to be available for Sunday and that is a mix of incident management team personnel
03:54along with additional firefighters into the landscape.
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