Mr Lapsley says Monday's drizzle was not enough to add significant moisture to the forests. "It gives us respite," he said. "But the next hot day will burn it all off." Government projections show a blaze that gets away in the Warburton Valley, or at Mount Dandenong, could destroy more than 4000 homes – twice as many as were lost on Black Saturday. The view from just outside Kinglake. The small town has been rebuilt since Black Saturday - and the forests have grown back. Credit:Chris Hopkins A similar bushfire further to the east would compromise Melbourne’s drinking water supply. The projections are contained in the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning's strategic bushfire management plan published in 2015.

The department has said that since then, bushfire risk in the region has increased to pre-Black Saturday levels. “The situation in the last couple of weeks is that things are very dry across the state now,” said Luke Hegarty, a spokesman for the State Control Centre. “That will challenge us because a lot of the areas where we did have some of that remaining moisture is really, really quickly disappearing.” Authorities are so concerned about the threat to towns in the area, many of which have only a single road in or out, that they ran a mock-evacuation in Powelltown, Three Bridges and Gilderoy late last year, before the fire season began.

The region typically takes a few months to dry out over summer, reaching peak fire danger in February. However, Mr Lapsley said a hot December has already taken it there. Former Emergency Commissioner Craig Lapsley, seen here at a news conference in 2018. Credit:Chris Hopkins Mark Morrow lives in Kinglake West where his house, and eight others around it, were lost in 2009 (they have now been rebuilt). "They’ve done no clearing, they’ve done nothing with the undergrowth," he said. "I went for a walk through the bush, and it’s just as thick as it was – probably thicker.” While the foothills north-east of Melbourne are not as dry as East Gippsland, should a fire begin many more people are likely to be affected.

“Think about that population," says Mr Lapsley. "You’ve got people who have lived in the city and moved to the bush. It’s had good forest growth. And that growth is now dry." Because much of the region’s forest is close to towns, it is extremely difficult to carry out planned burns. Using fire, bulldozers and grass slashing, government agencies have only been able to cut the risk in the region by about 4 per cent. "We’re in the grip of a very significant drought event, pretty well in most of the south-eastern half of Victoria," says Dr Jim McLennan, a bushfire safety researcher at La Trobe University. "Soils are dry, much dryer than we would expect them to be. The vegetation is dry. There are lots of places where, if a fire started on a bad day ... we’d potentially be in trouble."

Gary Morgan, Victoria's former chief fire officer, says the risk will continue to grow toward February as the region's mountain ash forests dry out. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video "Once they dry... you have huge fuel loads," he says. "When you have a fire in that forest it is really intense.” A fire in east-central Victoria is one of the CFA's nightmare scenarios. Almost 60 per cent of Victoria’s population live there and about half of them live in properties close to bushland. Many are "tree-changers" who are have not seen a bushfire before. It has some of the most flammable vegetation on Earth. Loading