Flood hits Inverloch
Flood: water gushed over A”Beckett Street bringing traffic to a crawl. Photo by Stephanie Hall. Others are available at her website www.redbubble.com/people/ishbel
By Jane Ross
A 45 minute deluge of rain early on Sunday morning wreaked havoc in Inverloch.
Shops were flooded, roads were awash, the Inverloch Jazz Festival’s main day was cancelled and the library inundated.
South Gippsland Water’s managing director Steve Evans measured over 90mm in his Inverloch home rain gauge.
“It poured and poured and poured!”
The downpour started around 7am.
Scott Hughes and his helpers sloshed around in ankle deep water at his menswear store in A’Beckett Street, while an army of Bass Coast Council and library staff and volunteers laboured in The Hub on the corner of Reilly and A’Beckett streets.
The entire collection was moved out of the library so carpet could be dried and information technology floor plugs drained of flood water.
The Hub, opened with much fanfare last July, is a shire-owned building and council’s insurers are assessing the situation. CEO Allan Bawden said it is too early to put a dollar value on the damage.
Eight members of the South Gippsland Conservation Society spent half a day cleaning up flood water and debris from the environment centre on the Inverloch foreshore.
The society’s John Gunson said the centre’s meeting room carpet was saturated around doorways, as was the carpet behind the front counter.
“Most of the stock is off the floor and the shop and shell museum aren’t carpeted so it could have been a lot worse,” said Mr Gunson.
He believes water flooded in through the toilets, bringing mud with it.
“There was a lot of debris, mulch and muck on the deck at the front.”
Nevertheless, the group’s annual general meeting went ahead the following day. The guest speaker was long-time member David de Kretser, now Governor of Victoria. His topic? Climate change.
Inverloch environmentalist Andrew Chapman is not convinced the downpour was anything out of the ordinary.
“We haven’t had tropical rain for a few years. When you go through a period of drought, people seem to forget what rain’s like. It comes and goes in cycles.”
Scott Hughes was pleased none of his stock was damaged, but he is rueing the fact that he lost a day’s trade because the menswear shop couldn’t open.
Inverloch SES controller Geoff Swanton said 12 members attended to 18 or 19 call outs from early Sunday morning until well into the afternoon.
Most of the calls were from people whose houses had been flooded, but a number of volunteers cleared drains, dug trenches and sandbagged The Hub.
West Gippsland Library Corporation CEO John Murrell said it took him 2 ½ hours to eat a spoonful of breakfast as he oversaw by phone emergency management at Inverloch and Warragul branches which were both flooded.
The entire floor at Inverloch was inundated. Five library staff, council, CFA, SES and Lions club volunteers worked until 4pm to remove the entire collection out of the building.
The library will be closed until Saturday.
Fines will be waived between March 9 and 12 and borrowed items can still be returned through the shute.
The rain ruined the main day of what was shaping up as the best ever Inverloch Jazz Festival.
President Ross Owen said Sunday is the biggest of the four-day festival, with jazz in a marquee and the community hall set to draw big crowds. Neither of these venues went ahead. Mr Owen had to cancel 40 bands and was unable to allow for day ticket sales. However a full jazz program ran in two other facilities.
Mr Owen said the festival committee decided to cancel the Labor Day Picnic in the Park which is run with the community hall as a back up.
With that venue out of action, there was no contingency plan.
Three storms in Inverloch on Monday vindicated the decision.
Solid rain fell on South Gippsland Water’s catchments during the week, but there was little immediate change to storage levels.
“Water is still running in rapidly and we expect a few percentage point increases from continued inflow,” said Mr Evans.
Lance Creek near Wonthaggi recorded 54.8mm, Leongatha’s Ruby Creek 62.4, Korumburra’s Coalition Creek 58mm, and Poowong, Loch, Nyora’s Little Bass 65mm.
Neville Buckland noted 70mm at Fish Creek over the weekend.
“I’m sloshing around in gumboots!”
Margery Robson reported a total of 83mm at Ruby over the long weekend, 60.5 of which she tipped out of her gauge on Sunday morning.
She was amazed to find another 13mm on Tuesday morning.
“It’s a very promising start to autumn,” said Lindsay Fromhold who noted 32.5mm at Meeniyan.
Crowd numbers were down at the Stony Creek Races on Sunday, but the event went ahead without a hitch.
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