An arsonist lit test fires before starting the blaze that spread into a Victorian coal mine, police believe.



Chief commissioner Ken Lay said police believe the same person or persons lit a test fire in Hazelwood on 28 January to see how the fire would act before setting another in the same area on the morning of 9 February.

The arsonist then allegedly set three fires on the Strzelecki Highway at Driffield, near Morwell, about 1.30pm on the same day, which spotted into the Hazelwood open-cut coal mine and continues to burn.

“This fire was set on the worst fire day for this year and had the potential to cause an enormous amount of damage and loss of life,” Lay told reporters on Tuesday.

Lead investigator Inspector Mark Langham said the three fires were set over a three-kilometre section of the highway, two in grassland and paddocks and the other in a pine plantation on two sides of a dirt track.

“The three fire seats that were set along the Strzelecki were systematically set to cause a large bushfire,” he said.

The person responsible was likely to be someone who lived or worked in the Latrobe Valley or wider Gippsland region, with the fires lit along dirt tracks leading into plantations behind the highway which also provided easy getaway routes.

“This was someone with a vehicle, a mode of transport, to set three seats of fire within a 15-minute period,” Langham said.

The test fires lit two weeks earlier were in similar locations, within a few kilometres of each other on high fire-danger days, he said.

“We believe that there’s a bit of a systematic arsonist and we really want to put a stop to this person very quickly,” Langham said.

Fire Services commissioner Craig Lapsley said the arsonist had maliciously set fire at the most critical point of the day when the weather conditions were at their worst.

“There’s someone who has definitely thought about putting fire into the environment on the worst part of the day, on the hottest part of the day and when a wind change was forecast.”

Police had saturated the area with extra patrols but the arsonist still managed to set the fires.

The blaze was one of two fires that spotted into the Hazelwood mine, with a fire that began on 7 February also moving through the Yallourn coal mine and Australian Paper Maryvale mill complex.

Both seriously threatened the western side of the town of Morwell, Lapsley said.

The fire is burning over three kilometres in worked-out faces of the Hazelwood mine, spewing thick smoke and ash over Morwell.

Lapsley said the fire would take at least another fortnight to put out.

There are no suspects at this stage.