Victoria in Flood

This flood impacted on over two thirds of Victoria. The most significant flood that had impacted this state probably in living memory. A massive amount of water is currently surging through this river system. The town is now preparing for the worst. Just to see the water coming in and being surrounded, we were…just locked in. The floodwaters rose, threatening to swallow the low-lying town centre. A number of the river systems had recorded their largest flood on record, and we had 140 townships impacted. When the flood came, many people weren’t prepared for what was coming. Nobody knew what was going to do, it came from everywhere. All the creeks were full, everything was full. The town has been devastated, and there are fears it may never fully recover. I’ve been through the floods back in the 70s as a young kid, through the 80s floods, the 90s which were nothing of this. It’s just unbelievable to see the vast expanse of water. People generally do not have a good appreciation of the power of water, how it can just consume people, objects, vehicles and so on. With any event of this magnitude, any one organisation can’t do it on their own. It has to be a community effort. What are you doing?! Incredible. One minute we’re on fire, next minute we’re underwater. Just goes on. The amount of water was remarkable, to see it flowing through properties, flowing through townships as if the town wasn’t there. This event is definitely the biggest event we’ve had in our region, and it probably goes close to being one of the biggest events we’ve had in SES since we came into inception in 1974. Victoria’s flood crisis could continue well into next week, as new communities come under threat from the rising waters. Having come out of ten years of drought, this was a most unusual experience, even for people who had experienced flood in the past. After days of record-breaking rain, major rivers across the state have broken their banks and spilled into towns. We were really isolated so SES came in and fished us out. I think it was about 4 foot of water. One of the defining features of this January February flood event was the speed with which the waters moved from town to town along the river systems. With a wall of water bearing down on the town, locals are refusing to rest, a veritable army strengthening Swan Hill’s defences. It’s something that we were watching happen in Queensland only the last week or two, and now to think that it’s happened to us is just unbelievable. We certainly were working off the backdrop of the Queensland floods where there was a high level of community anxiety, because they had been seeing some of the very graphic images from the Queensland floods, the flash flooding that occurred in Toowoomba the week prior. Oh my god! No! What are we going to do? How do we survive mum? I know. One of our greatest concerns was for people’s lives. We need to give people the correct information for them to make an informed decision on their safety. We’re saying: you shouldn’t be here. It is unsafe. The northern Victorian town off Kerang is under threat of isolation tonight and could remain cut off by floodwaters for several days. The evacuation message came with little warning, but it was loud and clear. We are advising people that if you are going to leave, now’s the time. Very challenging for people in the community to think about evacuating their home, whether to stay, whether to leave. That’s a big call, but it was the right call at the time based on the information available to them. It was a traumatic experience to have to abandon a house that we’ve lived in for 20 years. To have a town full of people would have just been too much to handle and try to evacuate all at once, so, the option there was to evacuate while they could get out. Kerang awoke to find the last road out of town underwater. The town’s levies may have held but they were still taking no chances, shoring up Kerang’s defensive barriers. They built these enormous structures, temporary structures, that literally saved huge parts of that town from getting inundated, and that was sheer innovation by those people on the ground and extremely hard work. The townspeople didn’t even have to be asked, they came and offered. We started sandbagging thinking we didn’t know what was going to occur and I don’t think too many people did. We knew there was floods coming, but with previous floods, we didn’t know how bad it was gonna get. The final water level was about six inches above the veranda here which put it right through across the floor throughout the whole house. The power station was another big issue. The power company had actually built a bank around the power station before the water had got here. There was a call out to basically the whole of the community to get down there and we needed to top that bank up. Sandbagging also appears to have saved the electricity substation. It was lucky that we had, because infrastructure inside that would’ve knocked out 20,000 homes just in this area and probably a quarter of the state of power. Melbourne has endured 24 hours of wild weather bringing with it flash flooding and widespread damage. Oh my god. Sustained rain brought traffic chaos. The West Gate Bridge was jammed and many train services were delayed for hours this morning. Just sudden, hard and fast. Just so much water in such a small amount of time. Fast flowing water across the city caught many motorists off guard. Frightening, it was frightening. We actually had been out for dinner and had children in the car, and they were crying. May well go under very soon, it’s actually just starting to go now. The sheer ferocity of the storm and the speed of the rising water surprised so many. Has it stopped? We were getting 200 jobs within two hours. Where do you deploy those resources first, who has the priority? Within minutes, the street became a river, everything falling victim to the torrent’s path. Once it got under the house, it just came basically straight up. I don’t think that people realised how quick this water came down and the inundation not only for their own property but also in general the metropolitan area. Emergency services were called in to rescue several trapped motorists. The effort they put in during these floods is absolutely tremendous and will never be underestimated. People forget that that’s what they are, they’re volunteers, they’re no different than you and I and they just get in and do their bit. They work their innards out to do the job they need to do in their communities. And it’s the volunteer tradition that really makes SES what it is.