SES requests grow to 280

Greater Dandenong SES volunteers have entered their third day of clearing blocked roads and securing damaged homes. Picture: GREATER DANDENONG SES

The clean-up after this week’s destructive storm continues, with authorities still restoring power and clearing fallen trees throughout Greater Dandenong.

Last night, Greater Dandenong SES reported its requests of help had grown to 280 requests for help since 1pm on Tuesday 13 February.

Heading into its third day – and with the help of neighbouring SES units – there were still more than 100 requests to work through.

Meanwhile, United Energy reports that electricity has been restored to most of its impacted customers.

As of 8am today, there remained about 69 outages and 300 customers without power in the Greater Dandenong region, including Dandenong North, Dandenong, Endeavour Hills, Noble Park, Noble Park North, Springvale, Springvale South and Bangholme.

Estimated restoration times varied from today to 18 February.

In United Energy’s service area in Melbourne’s south east and Mornington Peninsula, power has been restored to more than 200,000 customers. There are more than 4600 customers without power.

Yesterday, it deployed an emergency response vehicle ‘Vera’ in Mulgrave which provided information, phone charging, a wifi hot spot and coffee.

“We are assessing where to deploy our support vehicle (today),” United Energy stated..

“We want to assure all our customers still affected by these outages that we are working as safely and as quickly as possible to get power back on.

“We know this has been difficult for many customers and we appreciate their understanding during this time.”

Meanwhile SES Victoria issued advice to the Monash, Knox and Greater Dandenong region that traffic conditions were poor due to felled trees and traffic lights not working.

“In the event of unmanned intersections with inoperable traffic lights, come to a complete stop, proceed with caution at low speeds and at all time respecting other road users in the same position where no clear right of way exist.”

Greater Dandenong Libraries were open until 9pm last night for phone charging.