An increase in temperature late last week saw a spike in fire activity over the weekend.

On Friday night there was a large increase on the Marthavale-Barmouth Spur fire, which grew around 27,400 hectares and is currently now at 48,127ha. This fire is still not yet under control. The result of this saw the closure of the Great

Alpine Road between Bruthen and Ensay on Friday night, which still remained closed at time of going to press.

The Ensay-Ferntree Creek and W Tree-Yalmy fires also remained active overnight and into Saturday with hotspots and movement along fire edges. The Bruthen-Six Mile Track fire saw hotspots emerge, but stayed within its containment lines. Despite the increased fire activity there has been no homes lost. A spokesperson from Incident Control Centre at Bairnsdale said that crews were working hard on Sunday to minimise the effect of the fire.

“As we stand today (Sunday) there is 716 people working on these fires,” the spokesperson said.

“That includes 538 that are on the fire line.

“For the Marthavale-Barmouth Spur fire we’ve been burning out some sections on the southern edge of it, which gives us that solid break to protect the communities south of that area.

“The W Tree-Yalmy fire is reasonably slow moving at the moment but is putting up a lot of smoke into the community around that area, as they all are.

“We’ve got crews working on control lines in the priority areas.

“After a couple of tough days for the community and our crews on Friday night and Saturday morning, we’ve got some milder weather conditions so now we are really focusing on control lines around the fires.”

Many of the communities along the Great Alpine Road north of Bruthen lost power, and have had other services such as landlines and mobile coverage impacted, which was planned to be fixed by last night.

“There were trucks carting generators to Omeo and they were hoping from late afternoon that a few places would start to get their power back on, starting from Omeo and working its way down,” the Incident Control Centre spokesperson said.

“Around 1100 homes and businesses were without power and there has been a lot of damage to some power poles.”

IMAGE: The eery glow of a bushfire filled the sky near Ramrod, north of Bruthen, on Saturday night as an increase in temperature late last week saw a spike in fire activity throughout East Gippsland over the weekend. (Photo: Hayley Turner)