By Tyler Wright
It is understood locals were without power for hours after a tree fell on a main arterial in Olinda on the afternoon of Thursday 26 October, blocking access to Mount Dandenong Tourist Road.
At 11pm, the large oak tree was still not cleared from the corner of Olinda-Monbulk Road and Mount Dandenong Tourist Road.
“Locals need to use Falls road and Georgian then can go back to tourist road,” Facebook user Inga Viveka wrote
“Blocked at police station to the corner of Range road/Monash road,
“You can drive past from sassafrass to Dudley’s, toward monbulk. (So go Georgian then falls then Monash and back to tourist road towards Montrose).”
Another commenter, Carol Robertson, said locals go up Olinda Crescent or Everest Crescent if they were coming from Sassafras.
Images posted by Liz Millman showed a bus stuck across Mount Dandenong Tourist Road after unsuccessfully trying to reroute through Everest Crescent.
Ms Millman said she visited a friend who was shaken after the tree fell down near her home.
“I got down there and I realised there was a bus across the road, so I had to go back again and go on a dirt track, and I got home eventually,” she said.
An AusNet spokesperson told the Star Mail the organisation received reports of a fallen tree across the road and on powerlines on the corner of Olinda-Monbulk Road and Mount Dandenong Tourist Road at 1.59pm on Thursday.
“Our team safely cleared the tree off the powerlines and then had to wait for safe access until the tree was cleared off the intersection. This took longer due to the size of the tree,” the spokesperson said.
“Once the tree was cleared, our team worked through the night to repair the damaged powerlines and reestablish safe supply to the community.
“The outage impacted 539 AusNet customers, who were reconnected to power by 5.11am [on Friday 27 October] thanks to the overnight work of our field crew.”
It is understood the bus was towed to a depot an hour after the incident and no one was injured.
