An open letter stating the urgent need for funding to prevent devastating future bushfire losses 

To whom it may concern

I’m becoming increasingly concerned that the lessons we learned during the 2026 Victorian Bushfire season have been forgotten.  

Six months have passed since the Longwood Berrys Lane fire claimed nearly 140,000 hectares of land in North East Victoria, just a two hour drive from Melbourne. Homes, animals, infrastructure, livelihoods and one human life were lost to a fire that it has been suggested destroyed more farmland than any other single fire in recent memory.  

As the unthinkably vast wall of flames advanced through the High Country, it caught the media’s attention and the nation tuned in to watch the state’s emergency services and first responders stand shoulder to shoulder with members of the community and put themselves between the fire and the community.  

But the journalists who came up here to tell the story of the fires are all gone. The politicians who rolled up their sleeves and got into the thick of it have now moved onto more current priorities.  

Across the state of Victoria, regional communities have been left behind.  

What did we learn? What meaningful change have we seen in the months since?  

The fire season wasn’t a one off.  

The 2027 Australian bushfire season is projected to be severe, driven by a supercharged El Niño weather event that meteorologists have said could rival 1997’s record El Niño - a weather event that caused heat waves, floods, droughts, tornadoes and wildfires. It caused billions of dollars in damages.  

The danger bushfires present to the 1.6 million Victorians (25%) living in the regions is growing.  

This fact is made more troubling by the fact that our population here in Mansfield Shire is also growing (forecast to grow 2.02% per year) as more and more people seek a tree-change in close proximity to Melbourne.  

The number of tourists we welcome, and are tasked with the safety of, in our shire is also growing (600,000+).  

We love sharing our beautiful part of the world, the best little shire, with visitors from Melbourne and further afield. But campers, anglers, hunters, bikers and prospectors spending the height of summer in the bush around Mansfield Shire when bushfire risk is most severe means we have to face the realities of summer in Australia.  

We dodged a bullet when the firefighters managed to stop the Longwood Berry’s Lane fire jumping the Merton Gap and getting into the Strathbogie ranges to our north, they are a tinderbox waiting to ignite. We have several similar expanses of heavily vegetated state forest and national park in our region. If a future fire gets into one of these forests, the fire could grow too big and burn too hot to extinguish before it reaches our community.  

As we approach the 2026 Victorian state election, we need to see increased dialogue around our fire readiness in Victoria. We need the state to remember the threat the 2026 bushfire season posed our communities. That threat may have been forgotten in parts but summer will return bringing longer, hotter and drier days and the threat will return, it will remind people of the pressing need for fire-readiness but by then it will be too late.  

In the lead up to this state election, Mansfield Shire Council will be actively advocating to decrease our shire’s vulnerability to bushfires, floods and other emergencies.  

That begins with the pressing need for funding for the Mansfield Emergency Services Precinct.  

There is no doubt that we have world class emergency services in the state of Victoria. But our facilities, here in Mansfield Shire, let them down.  

Co-locating our emergency services at the proposed Mansfield Emergency Services Precinct will provide them modern, fit-for-purpose facilities that improve coordination and improve outcomes in the frequent emergency management activities that take place in our shire.  

A purpose-built Emergency Relief Centre at the Mansfield Emergency Services Precinct will provide individuals forced to evacuate their homes and campsites a safe place to go when bushfires threaten the region.  

During the Longwood Berrys Lane fire, more than 1000 people were forced to seek shelter in the Mansfield Sporting Complex, a facility without air conditioning, during a heatwave of five consecutive days over 40°C. We simply must do better for those whose homes and lives are threatened by the natural disasters.  

We welcome politicians, regardless of political affiliation, to engage in this conversation and show us, the people of Regional Victoria, that the lessons learned during the 2026 Victorian Bushfire Season have not been forgotten.

Please consider this an open invite to Mansfield Shire Council where the door is always open to discuss how we can better protect our community in the face of emergencies.  

Mayor Cr Steve Rabie  

Mansfield Shire Council