Harrow-ing flood risk

Group Officer Greg Hobbs, a member of Douglas brigade, was in Harrow when he heard a community meeting was planned in response to the situation.

“SES was there and they were very short staffed,” says Greg. “It was bad in Natimuk at the same time and, of course, they were stretched across the state. The group in town was actually from Ballarat SES.

“We’d had about 100 to 120 millimetres on Tuesday evening which caused the river to rise and it reached its peak on Thursday night. This event was just from rainfall in the catchment.

“At the meeting there was concern expressed for the RSL building and the local hall. We called the local group by pager and got 25 to 30 from across the district. About 15 of them were just from Telangatuk.”

Also in attendance were members of Clear Lake, Connewirricoo, Miga Lake and Toolondo alongside Douglas and Harrow volunteers. They worked shoulder to shoulder with police, SES and the local shire and townspeople, filling 3200 sandbags with 95 tonne of sand.

“Seventy-odd people piled in and helped without question,” continues Greg. “The police did traffic management so we could go about our business. We used a local quickfill to pump out a cellar – that was done a couple of times over the course of the day.

“We worked until about 6pm, putting sandbags at strategic places around town, and Harrow brigade kept an eye on things through the night.”

Heath McClure is one of those Harrow members and also the owner of McClure Earthmoving. “We had three loaders and two trucks down there, moving in sand that couldn’t get into town in the bigger trucks. We changed the forks on the front for buckets and the shire came in and grabbed equipment. If you’re given short notice you don’t think about it, you just do it.

“We took a crane down the next day and gave everyone free rides. It’s 33 metres high so people had a good view of where the water got to.”

Incident Controller Tony Grimme from Ballarat SES – also a member of Miners Rest CFA – declared the response “tops”.

District 17 Operations Officer David Chugg seconds that. “Emergency management went really well across the board. The pagers worked well. There was a lot of work done by a lot of people. Our members pitched in even though it wasn’t directly affecting a lot of them. It emphasises the close working relationships we have with communities and the other emergency services.”

The Glenelg River which joins the sea at Nelson last flooded in 1996 when the Rocklands Reservoir spilled over.