By Mikayla van Loon
Gary Lee recalls the terrifying cracking sound that woke him from sleep and the shock of finding a four-tonne tree in the middle of his family home during the storms in June 2021.
Having made attempts to call for help without any success, Gary says he sat waiting in his car from 3am until about 7am in the hopes emergency services would arrive.
“I basically stayed near the house in the car hoping that someone would come but it never eventuated,” he says.
As a former MFB firefighter, Gary says he understands the demand on emergency services during major events but communication in the immediate aftermath could have been improved.
“It could have probably been better with more people answering phones, to say, ‘Well, look, I’m sorry, but this is what’s happening and we’re pretty well on demand or we’ve got no staff to get there’.
“That didn’t happen but I’m just accepting of it. It is what it is and other people were worse off than me.”
While there were warnings for major winds, the storm was never expected to be as ferocious as it was.
“The winds, I’ve never felt anything like that. When you’re sitting in a Hilux ute and it’s actually rocking. Even with my training it was frightening,” Gary says.
“With the amount of wind, it was pitch dark because no lights were on with the power all off and it was just black. I’m sitting in the car out the front and I thought to myself, ‘Oh, my God, this car is actually moving’. It was horrendous.
“I don’t think they expected the winds to be as big as they were and the warnings weren’t there for that.”
The thought of leaving never even crossed Gary’s mind with the mentality of “it’s not going to happen here”. He said if it was to happen again with better warnings in place, he wouldn’t make the same mistake.
“In hindsight, if it came again and I still had gum trees around my house, I probably would leave.
“But at the time, no. It’s the old scenario: it can’t happen, it won’t happen. You’re not expecting a tree to fall on your house. It’s not going to fall out of the ground and land on your house.”
Although warnings at the time were issued for floods and high winds, the Dandenong Ranges experienced over 100km per hour winds and unlike floods or bushfires weren’t given a ‘watch and act’ notice.
Worried about what could happen with the current weather patterns Victoria is seeing, Gary says it feels like it’s only a matter of time before trees start falling again.
“We had a massive amount of rain last month so the ground at the moment is probably waterlogged and if we all of a sudden get 100 kilometre winds again, who knows what’s going to fall over,” he says.
“The way the weather has gone the chances are, we are going to get this again.”
Still fearful of wind storms despite having cleared many of the trees around them, Gary says it is a sentiment many people in the Hills carry after the terrifying event.
The disaster was compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic which meant that people were less able to move around, or leave the area, in the immediate aftermath. Power outages also added to people’s information and communication difficulties after the storms.
Gary says the need to coordinate assessors for damage while losing all of their most treasured possessions to mould and rain, created “the biggest part of the stress and anguish”.
It took 10 months for Gary and Karen to move back into their home but that night will stay with them forever.
