By Callum Ludwig
The Upper Yarra may have escaped the worst of the wild weather on Tuesday 13 February but it certainly didn’t mean the Upper Yarra SES Unit were inactive.
While there were only a few callouts in the Upper Yarra, SES units in Healesville, Emerald and Monash were all smashed.
Upper Yarra SES Unit member Leah was one of four crew members who went to offer assistance in Monash and said they were sent out to assist with some jobs the Monash unit couldn’t get to.
“It was lots of trees down, right across roads or down in driveways, blocking access to people’s properties,” she said.
“They had over 400 requests for assistance and more were coming through to them as they were attending them throughout the day.”
Even by the time members of the Monash SES unit finished for the day at about 1am last night, over 300 request remained for crews to clean up in the coming days.
Leah said the widespread power outages also made it harder.
“Going through intersections like Stud Road, Ferntree Gully Road with no traffic lights was pretty hairy,” she said.
Some areas of the Upper Yarra were affected by the storm, with Ausnet’s Outage Tracker (which has been temporarily replaced by a data list due to high demand on the site) listing that over 2000 customers in towns such as Wandin North, Wandin East, Seville, Seville East, Yellingbo, Gruyere and Woori Yallock still without power the following day.
Leah said it was great to be able to help out another unit, with the Upper Yarra unit not unfamiliar with significant storm events in recent times.
“I was sitting waiting for the pager to go off all day expecting us to be called out nearby,” she said.
“It’s wonderful when other units have been able to come up and help us with stuff like that, and we had the opportunity last night to return the favour so we went on a road trip.”
