By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
A CALL of nature may have saved a Dandenong caravan park resident’s life during last Tuesday’s storm.
Monika Barany had just put her shopping down next to her caravan’s fridge in Shawlands Caravan Park shortly before 4.30pm when she got the ‘call’.
She had taken a dozen steps towards the park’s toilet block when she braced for a sudden loud gust, “a swirl of wind”.
Then she heard a resounding crash behind her and saw her caravan crushed by a fallen pine.
Her home – which she had only moved into two days before – looked like “someone stepped on a can of Coke”, her neighbour ‘Polish’ Siateck said.
The trunk came to rest at waist-height in the caravan’s kitchen area.
Had Ms Barany been unloading her groceries, she doubts she would have survived.
“I’m just so lucky, so lucky,” she said the morning after as she examined the wreck.
“I don’t really want to look at it at all.”
A few neighbours told her she should buy a Tattslotto ticket.
She said: “I think I’ve used up my lives for now. I’m not pushing my luck.”
During the sudden gust, roof sheeting from the park’s main house was peeled loose and a branch smashed through another resident’s window.
Shawlands manager Liz Miller said she was thankful no-one had been hurt during what was like “being in the eye of a tornado”.
“It was like a freight train sound.”
Mr Siateck said the “best I could describe it was a swirling rain of debris – and then the tree came down”.
“First the wind came from (the north-east), then it swirled around from (the west).
“I’ve travelled around Australia. I’ve never seen a wind like this.
“I was s***ting myself. It was scary.”
A Greater Dandenong SES crew also noticed a snapped pine branch hanging vertically over a caravan next to Ms Barany’s home.
SES unit controller Paul Daniel said members – with the help of a Dandenong CFA ladder platform – detached the high-hanging branch without damage to the imperilled caravan.
Ms Miller praised the prompt, competent response from SES volunteers, who were called out to 26 building damage and fallen-tree incidents during the wild winds.
Power was cut off to central Dandenong, temporarily closing down the railway station’s PA system, and the library.
