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Topic:Extreme Weather Events
Flash flooding along Victoria's Great Ocean Road has seen caravan parks inundated and cars swept to sea after thunderstorms and torrential rain battered Victoria's south-west.
Residents and holiday-makers in the region faced a significant clean-up effort on Thursday night, with some unable to return to their belongings and areas swamped with mud and debris.
The communities of Wye River, Kennett River, Cumberland River, Lorne and surrounds were urged to take shelter on Thursday afternoon after a storm cell with intense rain swept through the area.
Footage posted to social media showed up to three cars being swept to sea in Wye River, while several others were pinned to a bridge or engulfed by floodwaters.
Separate social media videos showed caravans being inundated by the Erskine River in Lorne, where the only supermarket was forced to close until further notice. SES crews are assessing the extent of flooding there.
The State Emergency Service (SES) said it had received no reports of injuries, but crews had to assist people who had become stuck in their caravans as floodwater inundated caravan parks.
A number of people had to flee to higher ground and one person may have been airlifted to safety.
Air and road ambulances are at the scene but it is unclear if anyone required treatment.
(ABC News)
(ABC News)
(ABC News)
(ABC News)
(ABC News)
A rain gauge in the Mt Cowley area, west of Lorne, had recorded more than 170mm of rain in seven hours since 9am, the highest 24-hour total for the site since records began in 2000.
Alistair Drayton from the SES said the intensity of the rainfall eclipsed everything authorities had seen before.
"The previous totals down there for a whole day total was 123mm," he said.
"In the last six hours, we've seen 178mm of rain.
"This is a significant weather event. This is significantly off-the-charts with respect to records."
While the SES said the worst of the storms had passed by the middle of Thursday afternoon, the possibility of rain in the area would persist for some time. Motorists were urged to avoid floodwaters.
Local residents Peter and Bronywn Jacobs, who live on a property at Separation Creek, described the flooding as the worst they had seen in more than 70 years of living in the area.
"We actually have the creek flowing through our property of five acres," Ms Jacobs said.
"A great wall of water still filled with tree trunks, came down at us."
Mr Jacobs said the couple only narrowly missed being struck by the deluge.
"It was coming at 100 miles an hour, it was taller than I am," he said.
"We missed being killed probably by about ten seconds because all these logs just demolished our chook house, and we just ran for our lives basically."
Mr Jacobs said two concrete bridges had been destroyed on his property, leaving them isolated, and a chook house had also been damaged beyond repair.
He said houses further down the hill appeared to have been flooded.
Mark from Kennett River, a town about 5 kilometres from Wye River, said his property copped a "hell of a battering".
"The water came underneath and flooded underneath my house," he told ABC Radio Melbourne.
"It was incredibly violent. I cannot emphasis how violent.
"The lightning and the thunder were extreme."
He said the volatility of the weather was shocking.
Cath, who called into ABC Radio Melbourne from Wye River, said the storms started at about 8.30am before the flooding hit hours later.
"There was a bit of flooding and then all of a sudden, about 1:40pm, it really was like a tsunami of water going out from the river, and with it three cars were taken," she said.
"It was pretty distressing seeing them. Hopefully there was no-one in those cars," she said.
She said people were not able to get onto the Great Ocean Road because of flooding at the caravan park.
"So they've had to walk up the back and come up the back roads," she said.
"They've asked anyone with a car to help ferry them down, around, so that they can walk to the pub to be accounted for."
Andrew Hack, the CFA Captain at Wye River, said a local caravan park had to be evacuated.
"People are currently sitting safely and warm in the pub, which is where they've been evacuated to," he said.
"There's biohazard issues because possible effluent fields have washed into the floodwater, so the water's contaminated."
Crews spent the afternoon working to restore power to homes in Wye River, Fairhaven, Aireys Inlet, Lorne and surrounding areas.
About 1,320 households, predominantly in Anglesea, remained without power at about 5:30pm.
The Great Ocean Road remained closed in both directions between Skenes Creek and Lorne due to the extreme weather at 7:30pm on Thursday. Local police were also turning traffic around at Fairhaven.
The coastal towns of Wye River and Separation Creek sit at the foot of a more mountainous forest area. Flash flooding is likely to have been worsened as water coursed down from the hills.
As well as the deluge, a south-easterly wind was creating treacherous conditions and waves up to 3 metres high.
Daniel Sherwin from the Bureau of Meteorology said the amount of rain dumped on the region in such a short period had "blown everything out of proportion".
"It's very, very rare, this event, the amount of rainfall we're seeing over there," he said.
The Otways region was not the only one to experience severe weather on Thursday, with thunderstorms developing over some sparsely populated areas in Gippsland in the state's east.
Wye River is about 60 kilometres east of the Carlisle River bushfire in the Otways, which has been burning out of control since Saturday.
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