By Tyler Wright
Emerald SES has joined forces with the Kallista Floodwatch Group in the battle against flash flooding, providing an educational meeting on how best to cope with gushes of water that in previous months have left property damaged.
The Pakenham SES Unit was also on hand to teach Kallista residents how to use sandbags, and how they could access them from local SES stations.
“Which is really good for the people here because you can only ever use the sandbags once, and they have to be replaced because they’re hessian bags,” Kallista resident Karen Kestigian said.
“They also showed us how to funnel the water using the sandbags and plastic…because the way when the water inundates the houses, to be able to create a little stream away from the house is really important,” Ms Kestigian said.
Kallista was impacted by flash flooding in January and March this year, with residents and businesses calling for an integrated water management system and better drainage to prevent property damage.
“This is exactly what we need until such time as our issues here – the water management issues, and infrastructure – are resolved; we will have to go to putting out sandbags,” Ms Kestigian said.
“Realistically because we’re in for a wet summer and they also said a wet spring, it’s really important that we get something in place to resolve some of the issues that we have.”
Emerald SES Unit Controller Ben Owen encouraged residents to purchase their own sandbags in pre-planning for flooding, but said the SES is “more than happy” to hand out sandbags in an emergency.
“All the predictions from the Bureau that we’re expecting higher than average rainfall in the next three months, so with all the catchments already being full [in Kallista], it’s not going to take a lot of rain, unfortunately, to cause some flash flooding or some riverine flooding,” Mr Owen said.
A La Niña event was declared by the Bureau of Meteorology on Tuesday 13 September; the third event in as many years, which is set to bring chances of above average rainfall for northern and eastern Australia through until early 2023.
Mr Owen said the Emerald SES Unit would like to know of any road hazards in order for crews to make the road safer and avoid motor vehicle accidents.
Mr Owen also said to avoid swimming in or driving through floodwaters.
“Keep an eye on our social media site. If we do have a declared event or were ready for that sort of response, we’ll put that stuff on our social media,” he said.
“We train Monday nights from about 6.30pm if people wanted to drop in for a chat around flooding and storm awareness…we’d be more than happy to have a chat with residents.”
The VICSES Emerald Unit is located at 277-287 Belgrave-Gembrook Rd, Emerald VIC 3782.
