By Lachlan Abbott, Clay Lucas, David Swan and Broede Carmody
At least 25 homes have been lost in bushfires and about 50,000 Victorian properties are still without power two days after wild weather smashed the state.
A Country Fire Authority spokesperson told The Age on Thursday morning that two dozen houses had been destroyed at Pomonal and one was razed further north at Dadswells Bridge after two separate bushfires broke out on Tuesday.
“The town has from all accounts been razed – there is not much left in large parts of Pomonal, so today is going to be an incredibly stressful day for a lot of people,” local MP Emma Kealy said.
The Nationals MP said despite the official number of properties lost, there was “still an enormous amount of uncertainty for people who don’t know if their house has been burned or not”.
Kealy said on Thursday morning that she was hopeful locals would get back into their homes “within the next few hours”.
Premier Jacinta Allan, who toured fire-ravaged parts of Western Victoria for the second straight day on Thursday, said an estimated three businesses and 23 outbuildings had been lost in addition to people’s homes.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan visits the Dadswell Bridge fire ground with emergency personnel on Thursday.Credit: Justin McManus
“There is an expectation that number could go up a little ... as the assessments are finalised,” she said.
The premier thanked residents for heeding emergency warnings earlier this week and evacuating well ahead of the fire front.
“It could have been so much worse. I want to thank the local community for that very, very strong response. And also to, again, thank all the emergency services, volunteers and workers who have worked around the clock.”
Ten minutes from Halls Gap, Pomonal was once one of the state’s major apple-growing districts, but is now best known for its wildflower show each September.
“The people who live in Pomonal live there because they love the connection between the national park and the town,” Kealy said.
“They live there because they love bushwalking, or they love the environment. They look up to the mountains every single day and there will now be a big scar there for a long time to come.”
Kealy was confident the wildflower show would proceed, as much of the Grampians remained unburnt.
At a community meeting on Wednesday night, Fire Rescue Victoria incident controller Mark Gunning told locals that the disruption to the power system meant water in Pomonal was not yet safe to drink.
Gunning warned that the main dangers of returning to the town were fallen powerlines and burnt trees that could still collapse.
The last watch-and-act alert for the out-of-control Bellfield fire near Halls Gap was downgraded to an advice message shortly after 10am on Thursday. That blaze was blown east by strong winds on Tuesday, injuring firefighters caught in a burnover.
The other fire, on the northern edge of the Grampians National Park near Mount Stapylton, was downgraded to an advice message shortly after 7.30am on Thursday. The fire is still burning in dense bushland.
“Crews continue work on both sides of the Western Highway to strengthen containment lines to ensure this area is safe,” the alert said.
An aerial view of destruction at Pomonal.Credit: Nine News
An advice message for poor air quality because of bushfire smoke was issued late on Wednesday for major towns north of the Grampians, including Stawell, Horsham, Dimboola and Murtoa.
State response controller Gary Cook told Nine’s Today on Thursday morning that neither fire in the Grampians was fully contained, but calmer conditions had eased their spread.
“But unfortunately, you know, quite a few losses have been experienced in that area as a result of these fires. And there are a lot of damaged trees in particular,” Cook said.
“And so we’re just, at the moment, making sure that only those people that need to be on those fire grounds are there.”
A Country Fire Authority crew put out smouldering fires that continue to burn at Dadswell Bridge.Credit: Justin McManus
Relief centres have been set up in Stawell and Ararat. The Grampians National Park remains closed.
50,000 still without power
Meanwhile, outage trackers for the state’s distribution businesses showed 76,782 customers remained without power about 9am on Thursday. At 6pm, this had fallen to 50,116 properties, many of them on Melbourne’s outer eastern fringe.
“That’s a significant number of homes and businesses and properties that have been reconnected,” Allan said. “[But] there’s obviously still a way to go.”
Telstra boss Vicki Brady said hundreds of the telco’s mobile sites remain offline.
“With the severe storms in Victoria, it’s almost unbelievable, isn’t it?” Brady told this masthead. She said mobile service interruptions were linked to power outages.
“As of early this morning we had about 328 network sites that were off the air. In terms of customer impacts, it’s around 5000 fixed-line services and around 23,000 Telstra NBN customers [still offline]. Specifically in those network sites, it’s about 97 mobile base stations off the air.”
Brady said Telstra was working with power companies and emergency services to get their network back to normal as quickly as possible, including by deploying generators. She said the “fluid” situation meant it was hard to say when all outages would be repaired.
“We do have batteries at sites but as you can imagine, batteries run down pretty quickly and a site like a mobile base station takes an enormous amount of power to run,” Brady said.
Distributor AusNet, which supplies power in the eastern half of the state, had 46,844 customers without power due to unplanned outages on Thursday afternoon – a reduction of about 25,000 since 9am.
Steven Neave, AusNet’s executive general manager, told Channel Nine they expected to have 30,000 customers back online on Thursday.
“We’ll have 400 crews on the ground again today,” he said.
“We’ve been working through the night ... clearing that vegetation out of the way, getting safe access to all the streets and suburbs and progressively, you know, restoring supplies safely as we can.”
PowerCor, which covers Victoria’s west, and CitiPower, covering parts of inner Melbourne, had 65 customers offline at 6pm on Thursday.
United Energy had 3207 customers off-supply in Melbourne’s south-east, while Jemena had reinstated power to all of its customers in Melbourne’s north and west.
The State Emergency Service had received more than 4000 requests for assistance due to wild weather by Thursday.
Opposition Leader John Pesutto said the Andrews and Allan governments had had years to better prepare for severe storms.
“In 2024, it’s just not acceptable that people not even that far from Melbourne are still without power and still aren’t able to use their phones,” Pesutto said on Thursday. “We have to do a whole lot better.”