A senior CFA officer says fighting the blaze that burned in a Victorian coal mine for 45 days was like trying to "eat an elephant".
The fire in the Hazelwood mine's northern batters stretched over 8.5km, CFA incident controller Bob Barry told an inquiry into the mine fire on Thursday.
Mr Barry said firefighters tackled the blaze in 100m "bites".
"We had a large task in front of us and we had to just bite off little chunks," he said.
"I use the analogy of eating the elephant a little bit at a time and by the end of this we would actually eat the elephant. And I believe we did eat the elephant."
Brown coal mine fires have an almost inexhaustible source of fuel, the inquiry heard.
Mr Barry, who had responsibility for the fire over most of its life span, said planning for high-risk days enabled firefighters to respond "almost immediately" to break-outs.
This included a break-out from the southern batters on February 25 that ran through a conveyor-belt storage yard and moved towards the coal bunker and the power station.
"The resources we had in place very quickly got on top of that situation and prevented the fire from entering the bunker," Mr Barry said.
Another CFA incident controller, John Haynes, said firefighting efforts focused on the northern batters blaze over a fire in the southern batters because it was closer to the town of Morwell.
"Any flying ash actually stays in the mine area," Mr Haynes said of the southern batters fire.
The inquiry heard police witness Detective Inspector Michael Roberts will not appear as scheduled because Victoria Police fear him doing so would jeopardise the investigation into the cause of fires burning in the Gippsland region when the mine fire started.
It also heard police had ruled out power asset failure as the cause of one of the fires that may have contributed to the mine fire, known as the Driffield blaze.
The mine fire shrouded Morwell in smoke and ash, forcing some residents to evacuate, after it was ignited on February 9 during the state's worst bushfire danger day since Black Saturday.
The inquiry continues.
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