By Callum Ludwig
It has been an unbelievable busy time for emergency services recently and the Upper Yarra SES is no exception.
Within the last two weeks, the unit has responded to a range of incidents from flash floods and cliff rescues to landslips and fallen trees.
Deputy Controller Hannah Brunton said it has been a massive two weeks, with the last week particularly hairy.
“Small flood jobs with just water running through houses, to big floods at the shops in Yarra junction, big trees to little trees, a rescue and everything in between. The rescue was such a big job, and then we had a quiet couple of days before the rain started, and then it just didn’t stop,” she said.
“We had just sent three members out to check the flood gauges, while others were attending to flooding at a house. On the way back from the flood gauges, our members called in a panic when they saw the town underwater because no one had called it in, so we all dropped everything and headed there.”
The flooding in Yarra Junction reportedly reached over a metre high and resulted in a major cleanup effort on Friday 28 November.
Ms Brunton said patience is the number one thing to keep in mind in emergency situations.
“We get people calling in multiple times about a job that’s not life-threatening and we’ve seen the job and we know that it’s there, but we have other jobs that are higher up the priority list.”
“To have some members of the community showing us their thanks was great because sometimes we end up in not nice situations with the community, getting yelled at by people.But these last few days, the community has really banded around us and done what they can to help.”
Heavy winds on the night of Sunday 30 October, damage to the Warburton Highway and Old Warburton Road and a house fire on Old Warburton road put further strain on emergency services in the Upper Yarra. The Upper Yarra SES was first paged to a job on Sunday 30 October at 6.50pm and crews were still responding at 4.25am on Monday 31 October.
Ms Brunton asked residents to do everything they can to keep themselves safe in large-scale emergency situations.
“Don’t do anything to put yourself in danger, because the last thing that we want to do is be rescuing people from a flood and then get called to pull a car out of floodwaters when you know you’re not meant to drive through floodwaters,” she said.
“Some of these calls have taken hours and hours to get under control, even with support from people who happened to be on the scene, CFA, traffic controllers and police.”
