The owners of Victoria’s Hazelwood mine are refusing to foot the $18m bill for firefighting efforts to extinguish a fire that shrouded nearby towns in smoke and ash for more than a month.

A GDF Suez spokesperson says it was a surprise to receive the invoice from the Country Fire Authority because they understood the cost of the service was covered by the millions of dollars the company had paid in its fire service levy over many years.



“We believe the fire services levy – which is in effect an insurance policy – is designed specifically to cover fire suppression activities, whether they be large or small,” GDF Suez said in a statement.



Despite GDF Suez’s refusal to pay the invoice, the emergency services minister, Jane Garrett, has called on them to rethink their opposition to paying the bill, considering the size of the emergency response effort that went into fighting the mine fire.



“More than 7,000 firefighters worked tirelessly over 45 days under extremely challenging conditions to battle the mine fire,” Garrett said on Tuesday.



The fire blanketed Morwell in toxic smoke and ash for 45 days in early 2014, prompting many of the town’s 12,000 people to flee.



An official inquiry into the mine fire, chaired by Bernard Teague, was reopened in May and is expected to report on health-related effects by December.



On 26 June arson detectives charged a 20-year-old man, who cannot be named, with arson and recklessly causing a bushfire over the blaze in the Latrobe Valley that spread to the Hazelwood mine. He was bailed to return to court in September.