By KATH GANNAWAY
TWO Warburton businesses which have had to shut up shop after being flooded out twice in one week are calling for urgent action from Yarra Valley Water.
A broken water pipe on Highfield Road sent water spurting metres into the air on Sunday 16 February and again on the following Thursday morning.
The volume of water which ran for around three hours before being turned off on the Sunday created a waterfall sending a flood of water across the car park behind the main street shops and down the embankment through the Waterwheel ground-floor shop.
The owners of Bud Parfums, Howard Jarvis and Kerrie Kioulafas, and Susan Cliff who owns Billy May’s, found themselves pulling on gumboots and mopping up alongside Upper Yarra SES volunteers once too often.
Yarra Valley Water has apologised and says it will renew the water main but Mr Jarvis told the Mail it is too late for his perfume and café business with the shop possibly unable to be used for up to three or four weeks.
Mr Jarvis said they would consider moving to another premises later in the year but in the meantime would run the perfume side of the business online.
“The immediate concern for a lot of the shops in Warburton is to get the pipe replaced.
“It could burst at any time and until Yarra Valley Water replace it, you have that potential of flooding at any time of the day or night hanging over your head,” he said.
“I don’t think some of the Warburton businesses are aware of what sort of damage this can cause and the potential for it to happen again,” he said.
Ms Kioulafas said the damage could have been less severe had it not taken so long to turn the water off on the Sunday.
She was at work when water started pouring into the building and said she was soon wading through ankle deep water.
As the SES volunteers worked to divert the water and save furniture and other stock from damage, Yarra Valley Water searched for the valve to turn of the waterworks.
On Thursday Mr Jarvis arrived to find the shop inundated and the pipe again spurting water and fuelling another river through the shop.
The SES sent a team up again, sandbagging and diverting the water and helping with the clean-up.
“We tried to sandbag the back door but the water was coming in too fast,” Ms Kioulafas said. “The SES were our saviours. They responded so quickly and were just fantastic.”
Ms Kioulafas said Yarra Valley Water had spent two or three hours searching for the stopcock on Sunday but were able to cut the water off more quickly on Thursday.
Yarra Valley Water spokeswoman Cheryl West said, however, that the leak was isolated within 40 minutes of an assessor arriving on the Sunday but care was needed in turning the water off to ensure no other problems erupted.
“Unfortunately one of the valves was difficult to find as it was buried in crushed rock on the side of the road,” she said.
She said no leaks had been reported prior to the Sunday incident.
The Mail understands that Yarra Ranges Council, which owns the building, assisted Billy Mays to shift and store furniture in the former CFA building nearby, but Ms Cliff was unavailable for comment on when the shop is likely to reopen.
