Fires flare as region bakes through danger day

Alex de Vos
The region has baked through its first official taste of summer this week, according to a weather expert.
Geelong Weather Services director Lindsay Smail said the region sweated through a “one-off” hot spell when the mercury hit 39.6C at 2.20pm on Wednesday.
“We’re not experiencing another run of hotter weather – Wednesday is just a one off,” Mr Smail said.
He predicted a cool change to send temperatures to the low 20s over the weekend.
In the meantime, weather activity in northern Australia was affecting the region, Mr Smail said.
“There’s a bit of moisture in the air blown down from tropical cyclone Laurence.”
Mr Smail forecast the region would start heating up again on Tuesday after a “pleasant” 26C on Monday.
“It’s expected to get to 27C on Tuesday but that’s certainly not hot,” Mr Smail said.
“The way things are shaping up until now, December hasn’t been as warm as November.
“I think it will pick up but I don’t think it will be as bad as Country Fire Authority and Bureau of Meteorology are saying.”
Mr Smail expected “nice rain” of 5mm to 20mm during the weekend.
On Wednesday the region’s fire chiefs were busy fighting several fires around Geelong.
Country Fire Authority attended a “small grass” fire at Eastern View on the Great Ocean Road, the CFA website said.
The CFA also hosed down another small blaze at Werribee and one in Norlane.
Operations manager Gerry Verdoorn said the day was “reasonably quiet” despite the soaring temperatures and warnings of extreme fire danger.
An electricity line power box failure caused the Airey’s Inlet fire, he said.
“Being a coded day, we had people alert and ready to respond, so we were able to get the fire out very quickly,” Mr Verdoon said.
“Apart from that, we had limited other calls in our region.”
Mr Verdoon was looking forward to plenty of wet weather during summer holidays.
“We’re comfortable that this rain will take us through to Christmas and people will be able to relax.”
Last month the region baked through a November heatwave record when it recorded five consecutive days above 30C.
On November 7 the mercury hit 31.9C before climbing to 34.6C on November 8, 34.9C on the ninth, 33.6C on the 10th and 30.2C on the 11th.