By Callum Ludwig
Four separate and significant incidents have occurred on Upper Yarra roads in recent days.
A car rolling into an embankment on private property and a multi-vehicle collision each occurred in Launching Place, while another case of a car down an embankment required a high-angle rescue operation in East Warburton. On Monday morning, there was also another car rollover in Gladysdale.
Hillcrest CFA firefighter Tim Reid was in charge of the multi-vehicle incident on the Warburton Highway and said it was a head-on collision between the two drivers.
“When we got there, police and ambos were on scene attending to the drivers and both very lucky, they both had gotten out of their vehicles with only very minor injuries,” he said.
“I think the weather had a big part to play in it yesterday with the road conditions and with the amount of calls received throughout the valley yesterday, I don’t think the people were driving to conditions, I think they might have been very complacent.”
CFA crews from the Hillcrest, Hoddles Creek, Yarra Junction and Warburton brigades turned out across the three incidents, with the Upper Yarra SES Unit also at all three.
Upper Yarra SES Unit Controller Hannah Brunton said a lot of the incidents were a case of people not driving to the road conditions.
“People just need to be mindful that when it’s wet, you need to drive differently to when it’s dry, especially when we are getting this much rain, just slow down,” she said.
“It’s insane, we literally go months without a rescue and then to get four in the space of 36 hours is crazy and I know that other units around us are also getting slammed with rescues,”
“I was having a look at our SES dashboard just before and in this rain, there’s so many storm events but we’ve still had 46 rescues across the state the past 24 hours.”
In a post on Facebook, the Upper Yarra SES Unit said it was heartwarming to see a CFA volunteer at the single-vehicle incident take the initiative to distract a child in attendance by showing them through the trucks and equipment on scene while adults spoke to paramedics and police. All occupants were out of the vehicle and being assessed by Ambulance Victoria personnel when SES crews arrived.
An Ambulance Victoria spokesperson confirmed that paramedics were called to an incident in Launching Place about 1pm on 7 January and at 8.05pm on 6 January.
At the 7 January incident, two people were assessed at the scene but did not require transport to hospital.
At the 6 January incident, a male believed to be in his 60s was transported by road to Maroondah Hospital in a stable condition for observation and a male believed to be in his 30s was transported by road to Maroondah Hospital in a stable condition with an upper body injury.
In their post on Facebook, Hillcrest CFA also urged road users to be aware they should slow down when passing an incident, as a 40km speed limit applies when passing any stationary emergency vehicle with blue and red flashing lights and that all road blocks and directions from emergency services must be followed.
Ms Brunton said people need to be a little bit smarter, look after themselves and drive to the conditions because emergency services resources aren’t infinite.
“As soon as it starts to rain after a bit of heat like that, the roads get so slippery and as the rain gets heavier, the visibility gets lower, people just don’t accommodate for that,” she said.
“When we got paged to the one in East Warburton and the notes said they had gone down a five to 15 meter embankment, the first thing that we did was request high-angle rescue to come in to give us a hand,”
“But the closest to us on one side at Wandin and Monbulk (CFA) were out at another rescue and the closest on the other, the Marysville and Alexandra SES units, were out at another job, and they each diverted resources to come help us though thankfully we were able to cancel them and let them get back to where they were working.”
