More woes in wild weather

Flooded roads: water across sections of the South Gippsland Highway slowed motorists down throughout the day.

ROADS were closed and properties inundated with water yesterday (Thursday) as heavy rainfall caused flooding throughout South Gippsland.

Toora, Welshpool and Hedley were the worst hit areas and large sections of the South Gippsland Highway between Meeniyan and Yarram were underwater, causing mayhem for motorists.

A driver attempting to drive through flood waters at 80km/h this morning had to be rescued by SES volunteers when he became stuck on the South Gippsland Highway near Yarram.

SES Incident Control Centre information officer Scott Hilditch said the man had to be rescued from the roof of his car, which put emergency service volunteers’ lives at risk.

“We’re really asking people to be mindful that with the whole of Gippsland saturated, there will be roads that will have water over them and it would be best to drive around and not drown,” he said.

Toora and surrounding areas received 64mm of rain in a 24 hour period, causing Muddy Creek to burst its banks and threaten a number of houses along Victoria Street.

SES and South Gippsland Shire workers were kept busy throughout the day sandbagging and closing roads.

Matt Wallis from Foster SES said they received in excess of ten call outs.

“We probably had more that we couldn’t get to,” he said.

“We ended up finishing at a house at Hedley which needed quite a bit of sandbagging, probably about 50 bags in total.”

Welshpool Primary School principal Geoff Cooling said some students went home early with areas of the school ground and the highway in front of the school flooded.

“We gave parents the option to collect their students early because we were worried about them being able to get home due to blocked roads,” he said.

“While there was water in the school grounds, there was no danger of the building being inundated.”

Mr Cooling said by this morning (Friday), the water had cleared up and it was “very hard to see evidence of where the water was yesterday”.

School buses travelling on the Toora, Welshpool and Mt Best lines to South Gippsland Secondary College were also cancelled on Thursday night, requiring many parents to drive their children to school this morning.

A representative from the college said although the roads had cleared up overnight, the buses remained cancelled as a safety precaution.

While Wonthaggi and Pound Creek only received 12 and 16mm of rain respectively, sections of the Bass Highway were still covered with water, causing one driver to lose control.

The man was travelling northbound and came across a section highway covered in water near Solider’s Road.

His vehicle aquaplaned and veered towards the left-hand side of the road, hitting a spoon drain and tipping onto its side.

Fortunately, the driver was not injured in the accident.

Constable Pete Barry said luckily it was a low speed impact and water was the contributing factor.

“Drivers needs to be aware of the road conditions and adjust their driving accordingly,” he said.

“It’s been one of the wettest winters in a long time.”

A section the Korumburra Warragul Road just past Strzelecki was also closed for up to five hours after it was blocked by a landslip.

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Posted by superadmin on Jul 22 2011. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry