At least 25 homes have been lost in bushfires and about 50,000 Victorian properties are still without power two days after wild weather smashed the state.on Thursday morning that two dozen houses had been destroyed at Pomonal and one was razed further north at Dadswells Bridge after“The town has from all accounts been razed – there is not much left in large parts of Pomonal, so today is going to be an incredibly stressful day for a lot of people,” local MP Emma Kealy said.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan visits the Dadswell Bridge fire ground with emergency personnel on Thursday.“There is an expectation that number could go up a little ... as the assessments are finalised,” she said. “They live there because they love bushwalking, or they love the environment. They look up to the mountains every single day and there will now be a big scar there for a long time to come.”Kealy was confident the wildflower show would proceed, as much of the Grampians remained unburnt.
“Crews continue work on both sides of the Western Highway to strengthen containment lines to ensure this area is safe,” the alert said.An advice message for poor air quality because of bushfire smoke was issued late on Wednesday for major towns north of the Grampians, including Stawell, Horsham, Dimboola and Murtoa.on Thursday morning that neither fire in the Grampians was fully contained, but calmer conditions had eased their spread.
“As of early this morning we had about 328 network sites that were off the air. In terms of customer impacts, it’s around 5000 fixed-line services and around 23,000 Telstra NBN customers . Specifically in those network sites, it’s about 97 mobile base stations off the air.”Brady said Telstra was working with power companies and emergency services to get their network back to normal as quickly as possible, including by deploying generators.