Police are ramping up patrols around properties destroyed by the Lancefield bushfires amid concerns of looters sifting through the ruins.
Authorities confirmed that five houses, 19 sheds, two vehicles, farm equipment and many kilometres of fencing were scorched when fires ripped through more than 3100 hectares of land earlier this month.
The fires started when a planned burn jumped containment lines on AFL grand final day, October 3.
Inspector Ryan Irwin, of Woodend police, said there had been just one report of suspicious behaviour since the flames subsided.
“It’s been raised at some of the community meetings that residents are worried about people sifting around up there, looking for machinery or belongings that might have been left behind by the fire,” he said.
“There’s always a risk in situations such as this that looting might occur, but we haven’t had any reports of it happening at this stage.
We had one report of a vehicle moving around the area when it shouldn’t have been, but police were on the scene pretty quickly and resolved the issue.
“We want to reassure residents that police are patrolling the area and making sure that no one is acting suspiciously.”
Inspector Irwin said the roads had been reopened, but police were still performing regular checks to ensure that only residents were travelling in an out of the area.
Planned burn investigation
An ongoing investigation by an independent panel was launched this month as the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning comes under scrutiny for the planned burn that got out of control.
Environment Minister Lisa Neville said last week that nothing was “off the table” in the panel’s work.
“The investigation team will be on the ground, collecting data, to assist them in being able to deal with the terms of reference we’ve given them – how the fire started, was it the right conditions, how it was managed once it was under way and how community was engaged in process.”
The panel’s findings are scheduled to be released in November.
