Wild weather wreaks havoc across region

WILD weather has wreaked havoc across the Geelong region, with last night’s thunderstorm resulting in building damage, fallen trees and power outages across Geelong, the Bellarine and the Surf Coast.

Severe winds and gusts of more than 100kmh brought down trees and branches onto powerlines, and damaged poles and other infrastructure.

There are more than 148,000 customers still affected by the outage in the Powercor network, with Geelong and surrounds among the hardest-hit areas.

Powercor and CitiPower crews are responding to more than 140 faults, including reports of dozens of fallen powerlines.

Traffic lights are not operating at several intersections across the region, including along the Surf Coast Highway at Beach Road in Torquay, Coastside Drive/Feehans Road in Armstrong Creek, and Whites Road/Warralily Boulevard in Armstrong Creek.

On the Surf Coast, trees are down in Torquay, Jan Juc and Lorne, and buildings are damaged in Anglesea and Aireys Inlet.

On the Bellarine, trees are down and buildings damaged in St Leonards and Ocean Grove, trees are down in Barwon Heads, Portarlington, Clifton Springs, Point Lonsdale and along the Bellarine Highway in Leopold, Wallington and Marcus Hill.

There has been significant damage along Barwon Heads Road from Golf Links Road to the airport.

In Geelong, houses are damaged in Grovedale and Bell Post Hill, and trees are down in Lara and in Ballan Road near Sutherlands Creek.

As of 10am today, Victoria’s State Emergency Services (VICSES) had 70 active requests and had cleared 96 incidents in the previous 24 hours.

The Bellarine VICSES units has responded to 39 requests, and Torquay’s unit has responded to 12.

The top three categories in Victoria’s southwest are fallen trees (107), building damage (32) and flooding-related issues (12)

Ocean Grove is the most affected town, with 12 incidents, followed by Torquay with 8, Wallington with 6 and Barwon Heads with 5.

VICSES received 1,670 requests for assistance in the previous 24 hours.

A VICSES spokesperson said there were significant wait times on the 13 25 00 hotline, so people should phoneTriple Zero (000) if it was a life-threatening emergency, or phone a contractor or their local council if they could assist with the problem.

“If you do need the SES, be patient and keep trying, because we are working through those calls.”

There was significant rain recorded at the region’s highest areas, including 33 mm at Mt Sabine (west of Kennett River), 30 mm at Mt Kelly (near Lorne) and 28 mm at Mt Gellibrand (west of Winchelsea).

The Bureau of Meteorology recorded rainfalls mostly between 15 mm and 25 mm at lower elevations, including 22mm at Cape Otway and 13 mm at Aireys Inlet.

Aireys Inlet had wind gusts of up to 111 kmh – a record for October – 117 kmh at Mount Gellibrand and 113 km at Cape Otway.

Geelong Racing Club track manager James Dalton said the Geelong racecourse received 18.6mm of rain in the space of 24 hours, with gusts of wind up to 85 kmh (which is also a record for October), but there was nothing too serious in terms of damage.

“There’s a few tree branches and some rail (that has been brought down), but that’s standard.”A Bureau of Meteorology spokesperson said the storm cell had moved away to the south-west but there was was a risk of damaging wind gusts along the cost until about noon.