More than 70 firefighters battled a large grass fire north of Clunes on Monday, which burnt out 20 hectares of grassland.
Just a few days after the Clunes community reflected on the first anniversary of devastating floods that destroyed the town, it was faced with yet another natural disaster in the form of a raging grassfire.
On January 16 fire broke out near an old quarry in the Pearces Road vicinity around 5.15pm, quickly incinerating nearby grass-covered hills.
A CFA spokesperson said 12 units from Clunes, Burnbank, Glendareul, Ullina, Ascot, Creswick, Maryborough, Talbot, Mt Cameron, Waubra and Dunolly battled the blaze for more than four hours.
"They had difficulty accessing water in that area, so a water aircraft was brought in to assist," she said.
"One firefighter was taken to Ballarat Base Hospital suffering from heat stress, but he's since been released."
She said the fire destroyed about 20 hectares of grassland, but no homes or infrastructure, and was under control by 9pm.
Clunes CFA captain Brad McNeight was first on the scene with 16 other Clunes CFA members and became the incident controller.
"It was intense but not fast; that was in our favour," Mr McNeight said.
"We did evacuate some houses because there was initial concern , but once other trucks arrived we weren't as concerned."
He said it was 21 degrees in Clunes on Monday night, which made conditions hard on the firefighters.
"Our (Clunes CFA) role was to come in from Pearces Road and start to attack the east flank," he said.
"I called for site appliances and 10 CFA units to start with, and the helicopter.
"It's in our fire prevention plan to call for the helicopter if the fire is approaching town.
"It was heading in a north-east direction towards the north side of town."
He said they also brought in a bulldozer to do a mineral earth break around 80-85 per cent of the fire.
"The other 15-20 percent was all rocks so we did a controlled burn to that section to eliminate any hazards," he said.
The firefighters, including Mr McNeight, were on the scene until midnight Monday and returned to do mop-up duties Tuesday.
Fire investigators were also on the scene Tuesday to determine the cause of the blaze.
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