With homes already lost to the raging bushfires, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has delivered a stark message to residents in the latest update on February 23rd 2024.
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00:00 In terms of the current warnings, there remains an emergency warning with a 'Leave Immediately' message
00:05 issued to many communities in the area that now includes those communities north of yesterday's
00:11 fire ground. This includes communities such as Amphitheatre, Elmhurst and Mount Cole and
00:17 surrounding districts. There is also a 'Watch and Act' leave now for people on the boundary of
00:23 Lexington and Correction, a leave now also for Amphitheatre. I urge people in the area, in the
00:29 area that have been given this warning to act and leave now, to please heed the advice. Heed the
00:37 advice and leave immediately because leaving immediately is the safest option. And leaving
00:44 immediately also means that you can head to one of the three relief centres, particularly if you're
00:49 in the north of the area, there's the opportunity to head towards Maryborough, the relief centre
00:54 that has been established overnight at Princess Park in Maryborough, but also to the other two
00:59 relief centres that were established late yesterday in Winderree and in Ararat. I also want to
01:05 acknowledge that our local colleague, our colleague and local member for Ripon, Martha Haylett, has
01:10 been working with the community based at the Winderree Relief Centre and the official advice
01:17 there is we've had around 200 people register to get access to support at that relief centre in
01:24 Winderree. The Western Highway remains closed between Ballarat and Ararat, however there are
01:31 crews out there on the ground at the moment and they're looking to have that reopened in the
01:35 coming hours and encourage people to continue to monitor the Vic traffic website for further
01:40 updates on both the reopening of the Western Highway but also to a number of road closures
01:46 in the local area and the train line between Ballarat and Ararat also remains suspended with
01:52 crews out there working to have that line reopened and that is hoped to happen in the next 24 hours.
01:59 There's also two around 5,000 properties that are without power across the state, many of those as
02:05 a consequence of yesterday's strong heat and wind weather that went through the state. And on
02:11 weather, today as we know is a much cooler day, however there continues to remain winds remaining
02:18 throughout the day which is of particular concern for firefighters on that fire front in Western
02:24 Victoria. Also too though we are seeing that weather hopefully will remain settled over the
02:29 coming days but there does remain a high fire danger rating across the west and the north of
02:35 the state. I'd also like to acknowledge that for some communities there's a number of schools that
02:41 are either closed or have had changed arrangements for today. Schools that are closed include
02:46 Amphitheatre Primary School and Buangor Primary School and other schools both at primary school,
02:51 both at secondary school, secondary college, Torella Primary School have been relocated to
02:56 Mount Rowan Secondary College and Pomona Primary School remains relocated to Storwest Primary
03:01 School and I want to thank everyone in the education system for supporting students
03:07 at this time as well. And as I said there was a more than a thousand people on the
03:12 ground overnight and that significant firefighting effort continues throughout the day.
03:18 Thank you.
03:18 [BLANK_AUDIO]