Two firefighters killed at Vic fire: union

TWO firefighters have died after a tree fell on their vehicle as they battled a large bushfire burning in Victoria's alpine region, a union says.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) firefighters were working on the 27,000-hectare Harrietville fire burning near Mount Hotham.

The Australian Workers Union (AWU) said two DSE firefighters were killed in the line of duty in a fire in the Ovens region on Wednesday afternoon.

"Our members have confirmed that two firefighters unfortunately lost their lives," AWU Victorian secretary Cesar Melhem told AAP.

The DSE said there had been a serious accident at the Harrietville-Alpine North fire, but authorities have not confirmed any deaths.

Emergency services are en route to the incident involving an emergency services vehicle near Pheasant Creek Track at Selwyn.

"At this stage police believe the vehicle was on the fireground and has been hit by a falling tree, so due to the fire in the area and the terrain emergency services are having difficulty attending the scene," a police spokeswoman said.

Mr Melhem said DSE firefighters were "unsung heroes" and there was little recognition of their work because they were not usually seen, working behind the fire lines.

"These DSE firefighters work in the most horrific conditions imaginable, away from the big centres, out in the bush, and with very little recognition for their heroic contribution to this state," he said in a statement.

"They have died heroes, which will be small comfort to those that grieve them."

Mr Melhem said the priority would be to recover the bodies from behind the fire lines and support the rest of the firefighters, before investigations were undertaken.

DSE and CFA firefighters have been making the most of mild weather conditions working around the clock to control hotspots and build containment lines around the fire, but have faced a challenge in getting into isolated locations where it is still burning.

Crews have had to trek for more than two hours to get to hard-to-reach locations to construct control lines to help stop the spread of the fire if it flared up again, Ovens incident controller Tony Long said earlier on Wednesday.

"Where crews can't walk into the affected areas, we use rappel crews who rappel down ropes from a hovering helicopter carrying their gear to put out hot spots," he said.

The Harrietville fire has burned 27,000 hectares since it was started by lightning on January 21 and Mr Long said it would continue to burn until the alpine region received significant rain.

The deaths come a month after Peter Cramer, a DSE firefighter and CFA volunteer from Tyers in Gippsland, died while working on bushfires in Tasmania.

Mr Cramer, 61, died on January 13 at Taranna, east of Hobart, while working on foot to identify potential containment lines on the southern boundary of the Forcett fire about two to three kilometres from the active fire edge.

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