By Dongyun Kwon
Yarra Valley got hit by a strong storm on Tuesday 13 February, which reminded locals of the 2021 storm nightmare.
It was about 2.30pm when the storm hit Healesville and the surrounding areas which damaged trees and buildings, and caused power outages.
The storm event put Healesville in chaos and locals rolled up their sleeves to help in the recovery effort.
After the storm swept Healesville, the local boy William Burley got out of his house with his dad to clear up fallen trees around.
“All the rain and the weather hit here,” he said.
“Even a branch had fallen on the power line after the power had gone out.
“So, we just looked around to help out because it obviously could be everywhere else too.”
William and his dad cut off a tree on Old Fernshaw Road, Healesville with a chainsaw and put the pieces on the side.
While the power outage continued in Healesville the next day, Yarra Glen recovered the power system earlier.
By 11am on Wednesday 14 February, most of the shops in Yarra Glen got the power back including traffic lights.
A local book store Novel Nook owner Naomi Gibson said everything seemed to be almost back to normal.
“From the wind, the power went off in Yarra Glen and it was off until definitely this morning,” she said.
“Because I live in Healesville, I am not sure the exact time when the power was back but it was still out of power at 10 o’clock last night.
“It was a nice surprise having the power on today, Valentine’s Day.”
In a post on Facebook, the SES Healesville Unit detailed how badly the area was affected by the storm.
“At the start, we had 20 calls in one hour,” it reads.
“From yesterday afternoon, we had three vehicles and crews out attending to incidents, only getting home around 8 hours later.
“A crew out again multiple times today, fortunately, we were relatively spared compared to some other areas, only 30 requests for assistance so far [while,] across the state, there have been over 3,500 requests for assistance in the last 24 hours.”
Healesville SES controller Andrew Worley said most of the callouts were for trees on roads, buildings and across driveways restricting access for residents.
“We are just finishing off one callout now [which was for] a large tree blocking a driveway,” he said.
“We did have one rescue callout yesterday [on Tuesday 13 February], but fortunately, nobody was trapped, it was a tree blocking some cars.
“We worked with the CFA and Yarra Valley Towing to clear it.”
