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A young family whose home was destroyed in the Lancefield fire, and whose property was left "a moonscape" has demanded answers from fire authorities about the handling of the blaze.
Martin Fitzsimons and his partner Ynte Kylstra built the house themselves on their land about 10 kilometres from Lancefield, and lived there with their two young daughters Stella, aged five, and Erica, aged 11 months, before the fire hit.
"It's like a moonscape at home...everything is gone," Ms Kylstra said of the family's 105 hectare property.
Speaking calmly during an at-times heated community meeting on Monday, the young couple raised many questions about the controlled blaze - which escaped and became a bushfire that destroyed four homes, about 26 sheds and burnt many kilometres of fencing.
The fire is now contained with crews completing containment lines around the fire on Monday.
A key question for the family was why the planned burn was lit in the first place.
"We knew this weather was coming, we knew it was the driest winter we had seen in a very long time. Everywhere there was talk about no rain, how could you still light this fire?" Ms Kylstra asked.
"We knew what the weather was going to be like," she said. "It seems really odd that the fire was still lit."
Concerned by the family's situation, Environment Minister Lisa Neville, said: "I'm very sorry for your loss. It's a terrible outcome that's happened."
Speaking to the media after the meeting, Mr Fitzsimons recalled the natural beauty of the property.
"It was a haven, it was beautiful. There were mosses all over the silver rock, there were beautiful big trees that were hollow (and) you could walk inside. There were animals everywhere," he said.
"At night you'd hear powerful owls hooting away...(there were) feather gliders, sugar gliders, it was beautiful. And because such a large area was burnt, I'm sure that a lot of them were killed and couldn't have fled the fire," he said.
Mr Fitzsimons said he wanted to know a range of details about the planned burn which escaped, including the vegetation survey, fuel load assessment and "what resources were allocated to its lighting, and containment."
He also asked: "When the fire was reported as escaped what resources were allocated to its containment, including ground crews, helicopters, other aerial attacks and why that failed."
A range of other issues were also raised by residents at the meeting including; concerns that the Macedon Ranges Shire Council cleared roadside vegetation in "yuppie areas" but did not do adequate clearing in the area hit by fire, repeated concerns about a lack of mobile phone and internet coverage in the fire area, and objections to restrictions that prevented people from gathering firewood from the state forest and from roadsides.
One woman said blackberries and gorse were sprayed on public land, but then died and remained a flammable fire hazard.
Earlier on Monday, Ms Neville acknowledged the severe impact of the fire on the community, saying it "must be a terribly traumatic experience" for people who lost their house in the fire.
"People are obviously very concerned about what's happened here ... It's put people's lives in turmoil for a week. And that is [an] incredibly regretful situation," she said.
Ms Neville said she was hoping to get a clearer idea this week of the cost and damage caused by the fire.