By Oliver Winn
It was a close call for the town of Warburton as local CFA units extinguished an fire on Mt Little Joe on Sunday 13 April.
The Yarra Ranges Crime Investigations Unit have labelled the fire as suspicious and have asked for anyone with information to come forward.
Warburton CFA captain Ron McIntosh said had the conditions been worse, the actions of the alleged fire started could’ve decimated the whole of Warburton.
“Luckily we had no wind, otherwise it would have probably reached Powelltown,” Mr McIntosh said.
“We’d have to make tankers 20 go [fight the fire], we’d get aerial support as well – that’s how bad it could have been.”
Aside from the incredible effort of our volunteer firefighters, another surprising quirk stopped it from spreading further – the Warburton Mountain Bike Destination (WMBD) trail.
“Because the mountain bike track runs sideways on the mountain, it keeps turning back onto itself, so that definitely helped in that scenario.”
“I know there’s lots of people that say they don’t want the mountain bike track here, that it destroys the vegetation and all that, but in this scenario it actually helped us.”
“It gave us that little bit of a firebreak so that the fire needed a little bit more oomph to get across,” Mr McIntosh said.
Local CFA units were paged to reports of a fire burning along the Warburton Rail Trail at 6.30pm on Sunday and it took multiple brigades to contain the blaze.
“Wesburn were first on scene with their truck, followed by ourselves with two trucks, followed up by Yarra Junction with their truck, and then I ended up with another one of our trucks,” Mr McIntosh said.
The ground is still quite dry so the fire threat is still present, Mr McIntosh said, so it’s important people remain wary of potential fires in the area.
“The big thing is that everybody’s still got to stay on their toes because the fire season’s not over yet.”
Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMVic) also joined at 9.30pm, assisting the remaining firefighters with blacking out the fire until it was deemed safe at 10.30pm.
Anyone who was in the area at the time, or has GoPro/dash cam footage of the incident must contact Yarra Ranges CIU on 97392300 or Crime Stoppers on 1800333000.
