SPECIALIST identification teams used in the aftermath of the Bali bombings have been recruited for the gruesome task of locating and identifying victims of Victoria's savage bushfires. 

Monday evening's death toll of 131 is certain to rise as the Disaster Victim Identification teams enter fire grounds and retrieve more bodies.

Police Inspector Greg Hough, who helped identify Bali bombing victims in 2002 and is coordinating the DVI units, said it could take months for all the bodies to be recovered.

"We want to make every effort to ensure deceased people are returned to their loved ones so they get closure ... It may take many days and months," Insp Hough said.

He said identifying victims would be traumatic and methodical. He said he believed every person who died in the fire would be accounted for.

"What I can guarantee is the process will be followed to every possible detail ... even in a worst case scenario, through intelligence it may be circumstantial evidence which is that strong that it could be no other person but that person," he said.

"We try and remove any deceased from any open areas (including bodies in burnt-out cars on roads), so that we are reducing trauma for their relatives or people travelling through the area."

The traumatic discovery of bodies has been made by emergency services workers, including volunteer firefighters, and sometimes even members of the public.

Insp Hough and police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon paid tribute to emergency services volunteers who have dealt with finding bodies of victims and said counselling would be offered to them.

"You can just see in their eyes, many of them live in those communities," Ms Nixon told reporters on Monday.

"A young man I saw today just had a look that was just sadness, utter sadness, because he believed he'd found bodies in a house and thought he knew the people that had lived in that house."

Insp Hough said the unit needs family and friends to help identify victims.

He said people should be ready with photographs, objects a victim might have touched, physical descriptions, jewellery with engravings on it or any records of doctors' and dentists' contact details they could put their hands on.

"It will expedite things so people should turn their minds to things about their loved one - Did they have a specific scar somewhere, from an operation, a tattoo?" he said.

"Some people have had artificial knees put in with serial numbers. Any of that information really assists us in our operations and the coroners court pathologists while doing post-mortem examinations."