Towns and farmland remain under threat by scores of fires burning in Victoria's east where at least nine homes have been destroyed as arguments erupt over firefighting efforts.
Five watch and act alerts for blazes east of Melbourne remained in place late on Tuesday.
Two of the fires, near Dargo and Maffra, were downgraded from emergency warnings after nightfall.
The most damaging of the state's 40 fires continued to burn near the Bunyip State Park, having claimed nine homes, damaged another and razed or impacted 23 outbuildings.
"I really feel for that community as a whole ... in particular those people who have been contacted in relation to the loss of their home," Victoria's Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp told reporters.
More than 40,000 hectares of land has been burned across the state by fires since Friday. Two homes were lost at the weekend in a fire at Yinnar South, further southeast of Melbourne.
While the work of firefighters has been commended by authorities and parts of the community, others have claimed not enough was done to save homes.
Rex Newton is frustrated Country Fire Authority crews did not help when fire bore down on his Tonimbuk home during weekend blazes that swept southeast Victoria.
"There was trucks sitting 450 metres away from my place doing nothing. Not one thing. They came in yesterday putting out spot fires, which you could put out with a cup of tea," he told Nine's Today program on Tuesday.
But Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville hit back at the criticism.
"I cannot believe how they (firefighters) would feel right now hearing that sort of criticism ... it must be a kick in the guts," she said.
Firefighters from all agencies had the government's 100 per cent support for their actions, she added.
The lack of recent back-burning has also been a sore point.
There were burn offs in the Bunyip State Park during 2008, 2012 and 2016, the state government says.
Premier Daniel Andrews said the weekend fires were so fierce, previous backburns had little effect.
"There has been extensive backburning done around the Bunyip state forest where there were conditions that made it safe to do so," Mr Andrews said.
"The strength of the fires that we have seen in the last few days meant that that fire either went through or went over the fire breaks that had been built over the last couple of years."
Mr Crisp said planned burns were not the "panacea" to preventing future fires.
"Planned burns can do some work in terms of slowing down the spread and the severity, but it is not the ... cure-all," he said.
Authorities warn it will take days to contain the fires and weeks to extinguish them unless there's significant rain, but none is forecast.
Conditions across eastern Victoria on Wednesday include temperatures reaching into the high 20Cs.
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