Death highlights firefighting risk: union

AAP

A Victorian man who died while fighting bushfires in Tasmania was a firefighter of 30 years' experience who had recently passed a fitness exam.

Peter Ronald Cramer, 61, from Tyers in Victoria's Gippsland region, died on Sunday while assisting backburning operations at Taranna, east of Hobart.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) firefighter had been 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.

DSE chief fire officer Alan Goodwin said Mr Cramer had been a DSE firefighter for more than 30 years and a CFA volunteer for more than two decades.

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He was a DSE training co-ordinator who also volunteered his time to train CFA volunteers.

"Peter was a well-respected and trusted member of the DSE community," Mr Goodwin told reporters in Melbourne.

"He was a very experienced firefighter.

"He spent a lot of time training and advising a lot of our younger firefighters coming through.

"He knew the bush, and it's a sad loss."

Mr Cramer was one of more than 70 Victorian emergency services workers sent to Tasmania on Thursday to help fight the state's devastating fires, which have destroyed more than 130 homes since January 4.

He was due to return home on Tuesday but was found dead at 5pm (AEDT) on Sunday on a bush track after he failed to make a scheduled call-in.

Mr Goodwin said the cause of death was unknown, and Mr Cramer had recently passed a fitness test.

"Certainly all our firefighters that we send away, all our firefighters go through our fit-for-fire program, through medical testing and so forth, and Peter was certainly part of that," he said.

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