Despite a warning on Saturday by the CFA, residents continued to leave burn-offs unattended on Sunday.

Victoria’s fire season forecast has been upgraded from average to “potentially major” in the Southern Australian Seasonal Bushfire Outlook 2014-15 released on Thursday.

“It’s certainly still disappointing that so many burn-offs were left unattended and got away,” Western District 15 regional duty officer Shane Phillips said on Sunday.

“Anyone who has had a burn-off (on Sunday) must ensure it has been properly extinguished.”

Mr Phillips said at least half a dozen burn-offs were out of control in the district on Sunday.

Fire crews were called to at least six grass and scrub fires on Saturday, most of which were started by out-of control burn-offs.

Western District 15 regional duty officer Anthony Pearce said he was disappointed fire crews were being called to unnecessary incidents.

“ People should not be burning off in these current weather conditions. Burning off should only be done with favourable conditions, and high winds is not appropriate,” Mr Pearce said.

“And people must have sufficient equipment on scene to control burn-offs.

“The fuels are ready to burn and the winds are making burn-offs too difficult to contain.”

Mr Pearce said fire restrictions come into effect on Monday.

“No burning off without a permit will be allowed from Monday, full stop,” he said.

“CFA will have no tolerance for illegal burn-off operations.”

A small unattended burn-off at Durham Lead at 3pm took three crews a short time to contain, before a callout to another out-of-control burn-off at Invermay.

Soon afterwards, four crews attended a small grass scrub fire where an old burn-off at Haddon had been re-ignited by high winds just after 3.30pm.

Out-of-control burnoffs at Hepburn, Brown Hill and Balliang had firefighters busy at 4.45pm.