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MELBOURNE - Smoke has blanketed Melbourne for the New Year long weekend as firefighters burn off 100,000 hectares of bush to protect towns and the city's major water catchment.
Bushfires which raged across Victoria's northeast for most of December has consumed 850,000ha of forest and farmland, an area almost five times the size of Victoria's Port Phillip Bay.
Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) planning and performance director Duncan Pendrigh said this would increase by another 100,000ha under a planned back-burn focusing on the eastern fire front and the Thomson Dam reservoir, which contributes about 60 per cent of Melbourne's total water storage capacity.
With easterly winds forecast for the entire weekend, a smoke haze is expected to hang over Melbourne as revellers welcome in 2007.
Mr Pendrigh said DSE and the Country Fire Authority (CFA) had containment lines, mostly roads and bulldozed tracks, around the fire but had been unable to access large tracks of rugged bushland inside the controlled area.
This will be burnt off under controlled conditions this weekend to prevent a fire flaring up and jumping control lines later, he said.
About 2500 firefighters have been called back from their Christmas break to help with the back-burn.
Mr Pendrigh said while damp conditions over the Christmas week had eased the fire threat, this was not expected to last.
The maximum rainfall over the bushfire area was about 25mm with much of the eastern front lucky to get 1mm, he said.
"Humid conditions will ease fire danger over the next few days but once the moisture dries off we'll have extreme conditions again soon," he said.
Meanwhile tourists, four-wheel-drivers and trail bike riders have been urged to stay away from the bushfire affected area.
"We've already had four-wheel-drive and trail bikes in some of the forest areas," DSE chief fire officer Ewan Waller told ABC Radio.
"This is not only illegal but quite unsafe, not only from the fire itself from the back-burning going on, but also falling trees and a lot of traffic from the fire vehicles."
- AAP
