Another Forest Fires Management worker died on duty on 3 January and two men were killed in fires at East Gippsland on New Year’s Day

This article is more than 8 months old

This article is more than 8 months old

A second Victorian firefighter has died battling a blaze in the alpine region, bringing the state’s bushfire death toll to four and 27 nationally.

Bill Slade, 60, a 40-year veteran firefighter, was killed by a falling tree while battling a blaze at Omeo in the state’s alpine region on Saturday.

The married father of two from Wonthaggi has been remembered as one of the longest serving, most experienced and fittest firefighters.

“This is a significant loss for the Forest Fire Management Victoria family and the community as a whole,” its chief fire officer, Chris Hardman, said on Sunday morning.

Slade was on a taskforce working at the fire’s edge.

“Although we do have enormous experience in identifying hazardous trees, sometimes these tree failures can’t be predicted,” Hardman said.

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“It would have been a traumatic experience for everybody on that taskforce.”

Slade had worked on major fire incidents in the past including the Ash Wednesday bushfires. His 40 years’ service was recognised in a presentation in November.

Another Forest Fires Management worker, Mat Kavanagh, 43, died on duty when his vehicle crashed on the Goulburn Valley Highway on 3 January.

Hardman said despite the deaths firefighters would continue to be deployed.

“We have to be out there ... It’s a long time before the risks around these fires are over,” he said.

Firefighters would be out in the field until late February or March, or possibly longer.

“I think we need to be really clear unless we get really significant rains ... 100-150mm of rain – we’re going to be in this for the long haul,” he said.

Emergency Management Victoria Commissioner Andrew Crisp said “benign conditions” were forecast in coming days, including thunderstorms expected to bring rain.

Victoria police and WorkSafe were investigating Slade’s death. Victoria police will prepare a report for the coroner.

Two other men, Mick Roberts, from Buchan, and Fred Becker, from Maramingo Creek, were killed in the fires at East Gippsland on New Year’s Day.

Meanwhile a third person has been charged over an alleged New South Wales south coast looting in which a fire-damaged electrical goods business in Batemans Bay was robbed twice.

NSW police raided two homes on Friday afternoon and seized electrical items. A 38-year-old man was arrested in Tilba Tilba and a 31-year-old woman was arrested in Narooma on Friday evening.

On Saturday afternoon a third man, 26, was stopped in Batemans Bay and police allegedly found mobile phones inside his car. They allege the phones were stolen from the electrical goods business. He was arrested, charged with receiving stolen property and refused bail to appear at Batemans Bay local court on Sunday.

The 38-year-old man was charged with larceny, entering a building to commit an indictable offence and possessing a prohibited drug. The 31-year-old woman was charged with larceny and entering a building to commit an indictable offence.

NSW police deputy commissioner Gary Worboys said hundreds of officers were deployed on the NSW south coast to stamp out looting.

“If people want to steal, if people want to skulk around in the fire grounds and get up to mischief, we have a visible police presence and we have police in plain clothes and we have aircraft in the air that are looking over these grounds,” he said.

Firefighters are preparing to use a week of calmer conditions to contain the most volatile parts of bushfires in eastern Victoria and southern NSW.

The state of disaster in Victoria lifted at midnight on Saturday after firefighters managed to slow the progress of a 60,000ha fire that threatened the alpine townships of Bright and Harrietville in north-east Victoria on Friday night.

Visitors were encouraged to return to Kangaroo Island – 49% of which has burned – and the south coast of NSW, as firefighters finished conducting property assessments and cleared dangerous trees away from roads.

An off-duty volunteer firefighter with the NSW Rural Fire Service was in Sydney’s Concord hospital with serious burns to his legs, elbows and hands on Saturday, after he was burned while protecting his property near Tumbarumba on Friday night.

Four other RFS firefighters suffered minor injuries. Three had recovered enough to return to the fireground by midday on Saturday.

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Authorities in Victoria issued an emergency warning for Mount Buffalo and the Buckland Valley on Saturday afternoon as one spur of the Abbeyard fire, which raced to the top of Mount Buffalo on Friday night, joining with an existing fire and burning its way up one side of the horn, turned north-east and burned down into Goldie Spur.

Incident controller Paul Bates, from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, said that fire did not spread as aggressively as predicted on Friday night.

“During the day we had seven helicopters bombing or dropping water on the fire,” he told Guardian Australia. “That limited fire runs ... They can’t put the fire out but they can slow it down and buy us time.”

The northern flank of the fire was about 10km south of Bright and Harrietville, in upper Buckland Valley near the Demon Ridge Track, as of 8pm on Saturday.

“We are not, in the next seven days, based on the next seven-day forecast, looking for another [heat] spike day,” Bates said. “So we are hoping to start backburning, if conditions are safe, on Sunday evening.”

It was, said the Alpine Valley mayor, Peter Roper, “a delightful day in north-east Victoria” on Saturday – wildly different to the hot, blustery and smokey conditions on Friday, when smoke obscured visibility down to a few hundred metres.

Roper estimated the cost, in lost tourism revenue, of the fires to the alpine shire at $90m. He said although it was relatively safe at the moment, they would not be able to encourage tourists to return until firefighters had more than a week of manageable weather to strengthen containment lines – meaning they had lost the rest of the summer holidays.

“I think we might lose some businesses [because of the bushfires]. That’s a possibility,” he said.

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The Bureau of Meteorology said conditions would remain mild in Victoria for several days but temperatures would increase later in the week, bringing thunderstorms.

“While the increase in temperature does tend to make fire danger worse, the humidity counteracts that,” a senior meteorologist, Richard Russell, said.

Fire conditions in Victoria over the next week would be “not as bad as we’ve seen recently” but “we are still right in the middle of summer though”.

NSW and South Australia are facing similar outlooks. The wind and temperatures will be enough to cause flare-ups but there is no horror day looming on the seven-day forecast.

The number of houses lost in NSW since October has climbed to 1,995, the RFS said, and 20 people – including three volunteer firefighters – have died in that state alone.