 Good afternoon, Craig Lepsley Fire Service Commissioner and Ken Lay, Chief Commissioner of Police. Welcome. Just to give you a quick update of where we are today, obviously total number of fires that are still burning in the state is 18. Of those, I'll run through those in a moment, but we've got a total of 2,500 firefighters out there, 2,500 firefighters working today across multiple areas including the Outer Betrapolitan area of Melbourne, La Trobe Valley and East Gippsland. A fleet of 70 aircraft is operating to support them on the ground, which is excellent and has been supplemented by aircraft from New South Wales over the last number of days. The three key areas is Kilmore and Wallam, known as the is the Mickelton and Kilmore fire and overnight that fire has moved significantly, increased in size and is now 23,000 hectares in size, still listed as going, has one emergency warning current for it which is for the Kilmore Kilmore East and Bylands area. On that 200 fire trucks alone working that and 19 aircraft that's a significant operation and will remain so for the rest of the day and into tomorrow. Obviously that's a fire that started on on the weekend and it's proved difficult to get a control line around the entire area of the fire and obviously as the wind conditions increased yesterday afternoon into the evening it caused significant concern to the Wallam and Kilmore communities and even saw that it impacted on houses in the Wallam area and likewise the Kilmore area. Some of the firefighting was exceptional. The efforts of CFA, MFB, Depe, Parks Victoria and also New South Wales Rural Fire Service have been noted by many to say that the fire was running hard up on the roads and the firefighters were able to in many instances suppress it or chase it and that that in itself is a significant issue. Likewise significant aircraft operations in that in that location yesterday and have continued again today. More the open cut of the Hazelwood coal mine is still burning it still has not impacted on the ability to produce power but it is in a in an area that is causing some level of difficulty to suppress. We've now got extra resources in there and are looking at an extinguishing strategy of how we will actually stop that fire and that that in itself is a problem in the sense that it is putting significant black smoke over more and is causing obviously concern and health messaging is important for the mobile community. Eskips land fires are still going haven't moved too much in the last 24 hours due to the weather conditions but are in still in deep suited forested areas and for that reason significant resources remain in Eskips land. From that I think there's a couple of other issues that are worth mentioning. Smoke across Victoria we've had reports of people ringing in to triple O and rightly so thinking there's a fire however we've seen that widespread smoke has occurred across the areas of Victoria adjacent to these fire locations. For example the Kilmore Wallan area their smoke now spread a broad area extending into central Victoria and also back in the metropolitan area and people need to be mindful of that and that will remain the case for we believe some days. We also reflect on the fires of Sunday and there is obviously many lessons to be learned from Sunday but it's also worth mentioning the saves that occurred on Sunday. We often talk and reflect on what we've lost but there has been significant saves and extremely good work done by not only community members but fire brigades and if for those people that live in the inner metropolitan area and have fire that's moved around their properties there's been significant work done prior to the summer obviously so some people have heeded the message to prepare their properties appropriately and I say that in the sense that it's congratulations to those that have done that however fire is extremely random. In one street we've seen a house be totally destroyed and only next door the house escaped with no damage at all so fire itself is random but also the preparedness around properties is critical. Two hundred fires reported on Sunday and that's a large number of fires in any figure. In close time we're going over to Chief Commissioner Lay. The weather for the next couple of days we move back to hot weather the northern part of Victoria will move into the high thirties and low forties. Central Victoria will be similar and southern Victoria will be in the mid thirties. So we're back there there will be potentially severe fire danger ratings and if that occurs we'll consider total fire bans if they're appropriate for those locations later today but I think the message is we're back into hot weather and we can only hope that there's rain occurs on in the Victorian landscape over the weekend. Ken. Thanks Craig. I just like to reiterate Craig's point about the work of the firefighter's over the last week or so it has been quite ferocious the fires we've seen over the last few days and their work has been quite outstanding and both Craig and myself are very very proud of what they've achieved. But again I reiterate Craig's warning that we're only halfway through this summer period we've still got a long, long way to go. We've got currently initial impact assessment teams in the field we're confirming that 34 houses have been destroyed since the 7th of February. We have advice of another 20 houses that may be destroyed otherwise unconfirmed until we can get people into the fire scene to confirm that. These numbers are likely to increase in coming days as the fires come under control. Roadblocks across the state we have 12 that are currently manned by police members. I understand it's difficult I understand it's frustrating for local residents but our police members are acting on the best available evidence as to whether allow people into these scenes or not. Now as the fire services commissioner has said many many times over the last week the primacy of life is the key driver in this operation and police are implementing the advice of the fire services to ensure that we protect life wherever possible. We will open these roads allow access when we can but that will be based on the best possible local advice. Just in relation to arson and deliberately lit fires currently we have seven 16 investigations underway. We are comfortable that nine of those have been deliberately lit and we're assessing a further seven in relation to their cause. We have fire investigators and our forensic people at these scenes. I'm pleased to say at the moment we have no outstanding people in any of the fire areas and again I think this is probably testament to the to the key approach of saving people's lives and protecting lives has been out the the key driver and I'm pleased to say that is well that is a very good result for us at the moment but having said that the fires are still burning they're still considerable danger to people and property. Happy to take any questions as I'm sure Greg is as well. What are the aspects of those arson and different actions? There are a couple of investigations that are underway that we do have people of interest and I would be hopeful that some will be brought to a conclusion rather quickly. 18 fires are still listed as going and obviously those that are the three key ones is Kilmore-Wallon, Moorwall and Fires in East Gippsland. Currently for the whole of the fire season including the Malley, the Grampins and fires prior to this weekend is 350,000 hectares has been burnt across the state which is a significant figure in its own right. There's still a fair amount of fire season in front of us. It's very difficult to to compare one to the other due to the weather conditions but if you go back to 1985 which was Evoka-Mirabara, Central Victoria, significantly large fires and again in 1977 which was a similar season it's probably on par. So they're the two seasons that we've seen similarities in weather conditions and fuel conditions and we would have thought in the trends and the work that we've done that around over 300,000 hectares would be achievable to burn this year in an uncontrolled environment and we're already above that so it might prove to be an above average from what the averages have indicated. Look it I think we're in a position now that people think that needs to be a 40 degrees day and 100 kilometer hour winds where I think we're now seeing that's not the case I think we've got such a dry environment the fuels are available to burn and we don't need all of those factors to see an intense fire. I think it proved to yesterday at Kilmore we're in the mid-30s we had wind speeds that started off to be 30-40 kilometers they weren't running at 80 kilometers they were 30-40 kilometer winds and saw fire to be very ferocious intense and was challenging to control however our firefighters did a great job but we still impacted on property. So I think that the key message now to Victorians is to be aware of anywhere in Victoria in the heat of the day it doesn't need to be 40 degrees the mid-30s with wind speeds that are 30-40 kilometers will do the job to see us have intense fires so I think that's important that we don't need to have these replicated days of last Sunday to see fires move around and move around somewhat uncontrolled. Yes it is disappointing and obviously I think that's a community and societal issue about how people behave in the landscape and I think people need to be take need to be very responsible about fire and the the potential to light fires. I think the Chief Commissioner might be best at all. That's great. Look we have another a number of operations underway to try and prevent fires being let I made the point yesterday that we actually go and visit people that we know have a propensity to light fires and let them know that we're we're interested in their movements and we have many many investigative units out across the state I mean the high-risk areas but the us and his complex we're seeing evidence of quite young children lighting fires and we've seen evidence in the past of people with clear criminal intent lighting fires we're seeing evidence of people being totally reckless with with tools and machinery which are causing quite devastating fires so is there more to be done of course there is we need to understand the issue we need to understand the issue better we need to keep the community best informed about how to be aware of suspicious behavior we need to encourage the community to be involved in helping us and that is reporting suspicious behavior whenever they see it but it is a very very complex picture this is not just about a criminal going around lighting a fire here there and everywhere there is it's a whole continuum of offending let me just say a number of people they these are mainly in the in the Kilmore area so we will be able to provide some more advice on that as the day goes on but let me say it's still very early the the fire is still burning so the ability to get in there and actually make those assessments is very very difficult at the moment yesterday we concluded one investigation and we have we've charged one person that was the Gisborne sorry a Bendingale related fire it was a juvenile we charged it was two children one's been charged and one's not of an age where that person can be charged you mentioned that we're only halfway through the fire season is there a concern that the situation can escalate over the next month? I think that's a reality the fact is that February is the the traditional time that we see our largest fires and we're only halfway there so we shouldn't underestimate what February will bring and the potential is there with the amount of fuel the weather conditions and as I've said before without rain without significant rain we don't change the the the potential of what this brings just in closing I might just refer to one statistic for you the fire ready app is is one of the methods of how we encourage Victorians to access information and warnings we've currently got 497 000 downloads of that app and that's that's increased significantly from where we've been in Victoria before so that's important in itself nearly 500 000 Victorians have downloaded the app it's interesting though that 85 000 of those downloaded it on on Sunday the 9th of February 2014 now that that's great I'd have to say congratulations for doing that the little message I've got though is that when you download it on the day of Extreme Fire Danger it's a fair chance that you haven't used it set it up and actually know how to use it correctly my message to Victorians if you want to use these types of methods download it today download it whilst the fire danger is of a lesser need not on the days where it's severe extreme or above let's get let's get in Victoria we're out where we as community members are as prepared as possible and understand where to access the information and do it now and I think that's a really important thing it's great to see that we've got so many people downloaded it but I suppose it's a little concerning when 85 000 people downloaded on the most extreme day that we've had for some time that tells me that not everyone is prepared and they're getting prepared at the last minute so that's just a little message but I like I say it's great to see a half a million people have actually downloaded the app thank you