By Shelby Brooks
The hills community is still processing the trauma of last year’s severe storm events, Emerald SES unit controller said.
“When we have high winds those heavily impacted get nervous,” Ben Owen said.
Mr Owen was one of hundreds of volunteers who spent the night of Wednesday 9 June cutting through the carnage of fallen trees in the Dandenong Ranges to respond to the 438 calls for help.
Southerly and south-easterly winds gusting more than 100km/h lashed the area that night, cutting power and creating mass destruction to hundreds of homes.
“It’s the worst I’ve seen and I’ve been here playing this game for the last 17 years,” Mr Owen said at the time.
“Most of those calls we couldn’t even get to. We were cutting our way up roads trying to get to houses… we had police and ambulance stuck on the side of the roads with trees either side of them.”
After 8pm, rescue calls started to come into the base, though phone reception was patchy.
“They were threat to life calls, people trapped in their houses mainly in Olinda,“ Mr Owen said.
“But there were trees on the roads everywhere. It was near on impossible to get to there.“
At 10pm, one of the SES Emerald’s response cars was crushed by a falling tree, the photos sending shockwaves through the community when they realised how volunteers had been so close to a fatal accident.
“We had a bit of radio coverage and I got a message through to say ’did you hear about the vehicle being crushed?’,“ Ben recalled.
He recreated the moment he radioed back, gasping and clutching his chest.
“I was like ’Are the members okay?’ Because that’s all I cared about,“ he said.
“The crew heard cracking in the dark and didn’t know where to run but I guess they ran in the right direction because they’re alive and well.“
Hearing the members were ok only offered a moment of relief before members forged on with the task at hand.
“We still have a job to do. Those members ended up rescuing a man who had fallen from his veranda underneath his house. They carried him out to the road to the ambulance, which was quite an ordeal with trees falling down around them,“ Mr Owen said.
“They saved his life effectively.“
Those four members who had the near brush with death ended up spending the night on the floor of the Lilydale SES unit, unable to contact their families to tell them they were safe.
Mr Owen said the unit received 800 calls for help, but estimates there were even more jobs completed that weren’t called in.
“That night was out of the box,“ Mr Owen said.
“And the next five days were full on.
“The level of damage up on the hill had never been seen before. We just went one tree at a time.“
Mr Owen said the Emerald CFA captain had referred to the night as the scariest he’d experienced, even scarier than Black Saturday.
“That puts it into context that someone who’s fought roaring fires found the damage of the storm more horrendous and risky,“ he said.
A second freak storm occurred in October 2021, which crushed Mr Owen’s family home, again leaving hundreds without power for weeks.
His Cockatoo home was crushed by a tree around 6.30am on Friday 29 October.
Ben’s wife and daughters were trapped inside but were fortunately unharmed.
“The tree landed where I was standing 10 minutes earlier,” Mr Owen said.
“My wife called to say a tree had fallen on the house. She was trapped in the bedroom.
“I drove back and ran down to where my daughters were bunkered in together for the night and they had a smashed window. So they and the greyhound crawled through the window and into my arms.”
A tree had penetrated the wall less than a metre above the girl’s heads.
“The dog is still very traumatised by loud bangs and windy days, which we all will be to some extent for a period of time,“ Mr Owen said.
“Most of the time I’m ok but the other night a pine tree had dropped some branches onto the road and it got me spooked. It was all brought back by the sappy smell.“
