By Romy Stephens
Wild weather has hit the Yarra Ranges for the second time in less than two weeks, with emergency services working through the night to assist communities.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) issued a severe weather warning for damaging winds on Tuesday morning, 8 September, for people in parts of the city through to Gippsland.
Emerald SES unit manager Ben Owen said they had received just shy of 100 calls for assistance since yesterday (7 September).
He said the suburbs that were hardest hit included Belgrave, Selby and Tecoma.
“We’ve had members out since 10 pm last night. We had two crews overnight, they’ve gone to bed and we had some fresh crews today,” Mr Owen said.
“We’ve had 96 pages for assistance in the last 24 hours.”
Mr Owen said SES crews from Malvern, Monash and Chelsea provided assistance, after fallen trees created numerous traffic hazards and damaged buildings.
Suburbs such as Lilydale and Mount Evelyn didn’t receive the full force of the winds with Lilydale SES only receiving 15 calls for assistance.
Unit manager Shaun Caulfield said as a result, crews would be heading to other parts of the shire to provide assistance.
“We’re putting our support arrangement in place and sending a crew to Upper Yarra soon,” he said.
“It’s really important for us to be able to share our resources around. In the event last week we had seven crews from other units come help us out.”
The damaging winds came less than 12 days after severe weather impacted the Yarra Ranges on 27 August.
That event saw two people killed by falling trees in the Yarra Ranges.
Mr Owen said the past couple of weeks had been very challenging for local SES units.
“We’re all volunteers so many of those people out today didn’t go to work, they were able to be relieved from work to volunteer,” he said.
He encouraged residents throughout the Yarra Ranges to “always be prepared” for severe storms.
“Spring is our busy time, there’s going to be more wild weather, there’s rain forecasted in the next six-eight weeks,” Mr Owen said.
Mr Caulfield echoed those comments.
“With the ground being wet and moving into spring, when the weather is a bit more volatile, we always have the potential for events like this,” he said.
“People need to be mindful of the fact that strong winds can cause otherwise healthy trees to fall.
“When the ground is sodden they come out to the ground a lot easier. Now is the time to be preparing your property for the spring storms, having your gutters cleaned out, making sure you don’t have loose items lying around in your backyard.”
