As destructive winds die down, Victoria deals with the aftermath of violent storms

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Many Victorian households are still without power, as electricity companies rush to turn the lights back on after wild storms. Meanwhile, the worst of the winds have departed the state, according to the SES.

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00:00The SES out again in full force after more than a week of tireless work.

00:11Volunteers flew down from New South Wales to give Warragul crews a helping hand.

00:15We've formed approximately 10 teams to come down here to Victoria and just provide that

00:19relief of our crews for a couple of days and it's always surprising that the volunteers

00:23just give so much.

00:27From their to-do list, helping Druin resident Michelle, whose caravan roof collapsed in

00:32the storms.

00:33I thought I was going to die.

00:35I thought I was going to get hit by the branch and I thought I was actually going to die

00:39and I only just missed me.

00:41Winds across the region left trees snapped and uprooted.

00:45It just looks like a tornado or something's just come straight through and taken them

00:50all down.

00:51Tens of thousands spent another day without power.

00:54Electricity cut off meant piles of food wasted.

00:58Gippsland communities were most affected by the outages.

01:01And these are often the same communities.

01:04In many cases they are the same communities that were off with the last big storm events

01:08that we had in February this year.

01:10The town of Mirbu North, having learnt from their experience, firing up the main street

01:15generator.

01:18These little townships here are the lifeblood of a community and you can really notice how

01:24lost when there's no power.

01:26At Mornington Pier, a crowd gathered as a sunken tour boat was slowly raised from the

01:31water.

01:32It's heartbreaking to be honest trying to figure out what was happening.

01:34While the seas may be calm now, yesterday a storm tide surged up this beach on the Mornington

01:40Peninsula and washed away most of the sand these beach boxes were built on, making them

01:45unstable and tricky to rebuild.

01:48This is an environmental disaster, it really is like a war zone really.

01:52Along the coast in Inverloch, locals frantically sandbagged to protect the land from erosion.

01:59We have lost metres of sand and we've lost metres of vegetation.

02:05As the clean up continues, this animal shelter in the Dandenong was kept busy.

02:09They're all so vulnerable out there.

02:11The worst has passed, but the destruction will be felt for days to come.

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