GRAMPIANS Tourism wants the word `catastrophic' dumped from the nation's new fire warning system.

The call follows the first Code Red day in Victoria since the Black Saturday tragedy on Tuesday and public criticism from former head of NSW Rural Fire Service, Phil Koperberg, that the wording of the new danger rating is inappropriate and heavy-handed.

Grampians Tourism chief executive officer Chris Burchett said ``the misuse and overuse of the word catastrophic is not doing anything to further advance the understanding of fire risk''.

Mr Burchett said that aside from being grammatically incorrect - in the context of a forecast, the term should be ``potentially catastrophic'' -  the word was ``unnecessarily evocative''.

``We've had fire danger days for many, many decades in this region and we will continue to have them," he said.

Mr Burchett said contrary to some media reports, there was no panic in Halls Gap on Monday - a result he put down to four to six months of planning since February.

``The Halls Gap community is as prepared if not more than any other community in Victoria. There's an organised plan for the township and we've encouraged individual businesses to develop their own fire plan," he said.

``From a tourism perspective, we aimed to reduce the number of people in Halls Gap for that day.''

Mr Burchett said hostels encouraged guests to go out for the day or move on to their next destination.

``It was a very quiet day here. Most shops stayed open and they lost business," he said.

Business owners would need to factor fire warnings into their business plans, he added.

``The goal posts have changed and many business (owners) understand that.''

A former fire chief with decades of experience, Mr Koperberg said the wording of the previous highest level of warning for fire danger - extreme - was strong enough.

"In my view... the use of the word (catastrophic) is inappropriate," he said.

But the use of the word catastrophic is in keeping with new national standards used not only in forecasting high fire danger but severe flooding and other extreme weather.

In conditions similar to Black Saturday when 173 people died, fire danger warnings needed to be strongly worded, deputy group communicator for the Corryong CFA, Colin Brown, said.

``People have certainly taken the preparedness message on board. People have taken home packages on how to prepare their home and we've fielded a lot of inquiry from people wanting to find out what to do and if their place is defendable. It's meant we've been able to identify some places that are not defendable.''

Mr Brown said such progress was crucial to preventing loss of live in the event of a fire.

``The warnings have certainly raised the level of concern from the community.

``It's a learning curve for all of us, as this was our first catastrophic or code red day.''