Victoria's Premier Jacinta Allan has extended her condolences to the family of a Victorian woman killed when a tree fell on her cabin near the Victoria-New South Wales border. The 63-year-old was killed at a caravan park in Moama and her husband was injured.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Victorians across the state have woken up to all kinds of damage, really no part of
00:07the state has been spared, but tragically this weather event has claimed a life.
00:13A 63-year-old woman in Moama on the New South Wales border has passed away after a tree
00:20fell on her cabin, unfortunately paramedics were unable to save her.
00:24So a very stark reminder that these weather events can be deadly and to heed the warnings.
00:31But when it comes to what we saw overnight, we saw wind gusts of up to 146 kilometres
00:38an hour, likened to, as you say, a category 2 or 3 cyclone.
00:44And so with that came of course several thousand calls for help, we saw 2,800 calls to help
00:51to the SES overnight, and to put that into perspective, since this weather event began
00:57last Sunday we've seen 7,000 calls for help in total, so last night's calls for help made
01:03up about half of those.
01:04So we did see quite a bit of destruction overnight, I was just at a scene where trees had fallen
01:11down, sorry branches had fallen off trees in a street, downed a power pole and crashed
01:17onto a car, we've seen a garage collapse, a roof come down on a house, so everything
01:25that you'd expect when you see a weather event like this.
01:28When it comes to schools, we know that a couple of government schools have closed due to damage
01:33and that a couple of non-government schools have asked their students to study from home
01:38today just to make sure people aren't moving around the state, because we know that there
01:43is the warning that if you can stay home then you should.
01:47And more importantly, there are still 121,000 homes without power.
01:53Now the Premier spoke about this a little bit earlier, let's take a listen.
01:58Crews are out there on the ground right now, working as quickly as they can, but also only
02:03working in areas where it's safe to do so, to restore power as quickly as possible.
02:09In terms of telecommunications, I'm advised that almost 700 Telstra Fixed Line customers
02:15are unable to make or receive calls.
02:18Work is going on, being led by Minister Gabrielle Williams across a working group of telco and
02:23power companies.
02:24We know in these instances those two organisations need to coordinate their response.
02:30When it comes to what we can expect to see during the day, we'll see conditions gradually
02:35start to ease.
02:36The worst of it is probably over, but it is still windy and while we've seen this kind
02:43of wind event overnight, it's going to transform into more of a storm event as we see the day
02:50progress and it's definitely not over.
02:52There are still warnings in place, there's a coastal hazard warning along much of the
02:56coast, a Watch and Act for the southwest coast for a storm surge, advice level warning for
03:01the rest of the coast and a severe weather warning for the central and southern parts
03:06of Victoria, including alpine areas.
03:08So the message is that if you are in heavily treed areas, as they called it during the
03:15press conference, to maybe make alternate plans, maybe go and stay with a relative or
03:20with friends and of course to stay home if you don't need to be travelling.