Victoria braced for dangerous bushfire season

The Country Fire Authority (CFA) in Victoria, Australia, is still bracing for disaster as fires in the state's north continue to burn out of control on Thursday.

A 'Watch and Act' message has been issued to residents around a 5,742-hectare fire near Wangaratta, where firefighters are using heavy machinery to build a fire retardant.

A major fire in the northern Victorian town of Wodonga is also burning, however subsided somewhat on Thursday morning.

Wodonga West CFA captain Ross Coyle said luck had not saved the 37,000-strong town, but the diligent preparation over many years by fire services for a fire like this.

Ignited by lightning strikes on Monday night, the 187-hectare fire burned in the difficult-to-access hills overlooking the border town.

"We dodged a massive bullet ... I've got to say, if we didn't hold this back, Wodonga's residential area would have been hit," Coyle said on Thursday.

"We've known for a long time that any fire that approached Wodonga from the western side would be bad. That's why the CFA took it so seriously."

Calm winds slowed the spread of the Wodonga fire and other fires around the state that, on Tuesday, were whipped up by gusts of up to 100 km per hour.

The CFA chief warned on Tuesday in a Fairfax interview that the state had many areas where bushfires could have catastrophic consequences.

Ferguson said a very dry spring and an "underlying moisture deficit" for the past three years meant conditions were conducive for dangerous bush fires.

He said a fire at the base of well-populated Mount Dandenong in the east of Melbourne would leave "a very little margin of error" and could easily reach the top within 10 minutes.

Ferguson is equally concerned for the eastern Otways, saying the tourist region in the state's south-west was "well overdue for a significant fire".

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