Les Vearing lives in the Central Victorian town of Castlemaine, but lately has been calling East Gippsland home.

It’ s Mr Vearing’ s fifth trip to the east since early February as personnel from all over Victoria and interstate have arrived in the region to help fight the bushfires.

He has been based in Swifts Creek and Bairnsdale as an Incident Controller.

Mr Vearing’s job is “to coordinate how we’ re going to manage the fires”.

“There’s a logistics team that support it all happening,” he said.

Mr Vearing says he works in a team of four or five who occasionally will have different views on how to control a fire.

However, he says there’s rarely any arguments as any differences of opinion are referred upwards to a logistics team who determine the best response based on resources.

A seasoned fire fighting management officer, Mr Vearing’s experience is well regarded having played 40 seasons in the world of bushfires.

Mr Vearing started as a CFA volunteer firefighter in 1977 at Campbells Creek, near Castlemaine, before joining the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in 1979 as a fire investigation coordinator.

It’s a statewide role, but for the past decade Mr Vearing has been able to carry out the role from Castlemaine.

Despite the seriousness and responsibility that goes with the job, Mr Vearing says his deployment to East Gippsland the past few weeks has been enjoyable.

“Our logistics team is very organised and we all try to work as a team so everyone knows what’s going on,” Mr Vearing said.

“We generally work four to five days here, before heading back home.”

PICTURED: Les Vearing, from Castlemaine, has been managing fires for 40 seasons and was recently on his fifth deployment to East Gippsland this year overseeing the bushfires in the high country.