By Tyler Wright
Tree removalists in the Yarra Valley are anticipating residents will see the ramifications of last year’s June storm for years to come.
Ranges Tree Services, a small family-run businesses servicing areas from the Dandenong Ranges to Geelong and Torquay, completed about 40 emergency jobs removing trees off houses and assets after some 373 hectares of the Dandenong Ranges were impacted with fallen trees due to the event.
“If you have five standard trees and four of them come down, you’ve left that one tree in the open which has got major exposure now, so you’ve got to really assess what could potentially happen after that,” arborist Harley Sanderson said.
“The wind came from southeast – we hardly ever get severe weather from the southeast, it’s usually southwesterly – and by doing that, it had funneled up all the channels and hit all those major 200 plus year old trees that never really cop the wind from that side… that’s why the severity of the storm was so big,” sub-contractor Aiden Pace added.
Aiden was also on deployment for the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in the Dandenongs for two and a half weeks after the storm, witnessing the damage first hand.
“Our priority was to clear all main roads and get access to emergency houses that were really impacted, as well as trying to find residents that were still unaccounted for; the damage we saw was pretty catastrophic in the sense you’d have an area of 50 metres and there’d be 50 trees all on top of each other – I came across a few cars [that were] crushed,” Aiden said.
According to Yarra Ranges Council, the cost of removing, processing and disposing of the fallen trees and repairing roads has been $10.3 million, however the actual cost of the services supporting the recovery is thought to be closer to $31.4 million based on learnings from previous disasters.
For the team at Ranges Tree Services, the impact on the environment in the Yarra Valley is still evident one year on – with compromised trees falling on roads on a still day without strong winds.
“We’re still cleaning up in the [Toolangi] State Forest – we’re finding trees that are hung up or over roads being damaged… trees that are snapped out, ready to come out, and they’re still falling down… the damage throughout Victoria is still being cleaned up, and it’s a process that will keep going on for a number of years,” Aidan said.
The team advises concerned locals to call an arborist if they are concerned about the condition of their trees.
“It’s definitely changing in the Dandenongs because trees suck up a lot of water, roots hold all the dirt, grass holds everything in together…so you get rid of the roots, trees and shrubs, you’re just left with a little bit of earth, and with a little bit of rain it just washes away and starts erosion,” Aidan said.
“That’d be what people will be looking at doing in the next few years; working on the erosion, planting shrubs and replanting trees, putting in proper erosion beds, special blankets they put in to stop the erosion from happening when it rains, to give it a fighting chance.”
