00:00At State Control Centre, SES officers have been busy taking calls from residents who've
00:09woken this morning to the scenes of destruction from those really damaging winds.
00:14They've had well over 500 calls for help.
00:17At least 400 of those have been for trees down and more than 70 for buildings that have
00:24been damaged.
00:25Earlier on we heard from Bev, one resident who lives in Chelsea Heights, which is in
00:30Melbourne's southeastern suburbs, and she says that she's very lucky but she still is
00:36shaking after a tree that crashed down narrowly missed her home.
00:41I heard this almighty crash outside and was very concerned and I looked out my window
00:48and saw tree branches against the edge of my window.
00:52So I came downstairs to investigate what was happening and saw a branch of my tree
00:57had come off.
00:59Very fortunately it just missed my window except for the few branches that touched it.
01:05And there are severe weather warnings for damaging winds and associated thunderstorms
01:10or squally rain that covers more than half of the state of Victoria.
01:15We've heard from the SES's Director of Operations, Tim Webush, and he says that along with those
01:22damaging wind warnings, there are also gale warnings for the coasts as well as warnings
01:29for damaging surf and abnormally high tides.
01:32So he says that today is not the day to go out and do any rock fishing.
01:37He says that in terms of trees down, the majority of the damage that we have seen overnight
01:42has been in Melbourne's east and also southeast, so suburbs like Emerald as well as Warragul
01:49and Pakenham.
01:50Had a house damaged in Glen Waverley in the back of the house that's collapsed as a result
01:55of a large tree coming down.
01:56Fortunately no injuries there, but we are expecting as the winds cross the state throughout
02:01the day and they'll re-intensify across Melbourne this afternoon, that we will see further damage
02:05as the winds move through the state.
02:08We have seen some peak gusts of 128 kilometres per hour at Mount Buller and over in the states
02:15west in Portland there were gusts of up to 106 kilometres per hour and in Kilmore we've
02:22seen around 93 kilometres per hour, but it's the sustained winds that are also causing
02:28the damage.
02:29For example, in Kilmore Gap, which is just north of Melbourne, we've seen sustained winds
02:33of around 70 kilometres per hour and also some gusts across Melbourne metropolitan area
02:40between 60 to 70 kilometres per hour as well.
02:44Now apart from the warnings here in Victoria, there are also some warnings for South Australia
02:49as well.
02:50In the south east part of the state however, these conditions are easing as that weather
02:57system starts to contract to the east.
02:59We're also seeing some of those severe weather warnings for damaging winds across Tasmania's
03:05western and northern areas and we're hearing from the Weather Bureau that some of these
03:09winds are expected to start to ease throughout the morning, however they'll then start to
03:16pick up again in the afternoon so we will see those gusts once again happening before
03:21finally easing again later tonight.
Comments