ONE person is dead, roofs have been ripped from a dozen houses, massive trees have been uprooted and the townsfolk of Mirboo North are only just starting to come to terms with what they have characterised as a tornado which hit the town yesterday afternoon and evening.
After calls for help, including from local resident Mark Bourke, who said earlier on Wednesday that the community feels forgotten and urgently needs a relief centre, the South Gippsland Shire Council has rallied.
They’ve already had crews in the field clearing roads and combining with the Leongatha SES and other agencies. And now they’re setting up a response centre.
South Gippsland Shire Council CEO Kerryn Ellis has confirmed a relief centre will open this afternoon, Wednesday, February 14 in Mirboo North.
The relief centre location will be confirmed when a power supply is organised for the site.
“With Mirboo North the worst hit South Gippsland Shire town during Tuesday's storm event, council staff were on site all night as were emergency service personnel,” Ms Ellis said.
Ms Ellis said council's director of sustainable infrastructure Tony Peterson and Mayor Cr Clare Williams have all visited the town this morning, speaking to locals and assessing the situation.
A reporter from ABC Radio, Fiona Broom, was onsite at Mirboo North on Wednesday morning and said local people were saying they had “seen nothing like it”.
“The destruction is pretty extensive. Coming in on the road, there's just trees down absolutely everywhere. The wires from the power lines are down across the roads. There's even sheds that you can see have been blown across the road. Massive gumtrees are ripped up from their roots just uprooted trees left, right and centre.
“So, it's making it pretty difficult to get a clear picture at the moment of the extent of the damage because most of the roads are still closed and people don't have any access to their phone networks at the moment, so we are trying to get a bit of a picture of what's happening out on the farms as well.
“I did have a quick chat with the CFA and asked if they knew of anybody on the farms who'd had a bit of damage and they said all of them.
“So yeah, looking like quite a lot of damage at the moment and they’re still trying to find out how severe that is.”
Ms Broom said that while she was aware of the tragedy, where a 50-year-old Mirboo North dairy farmer had lost his life overnight, she said the news may not be general knowledge in the town.
“I don't think that news has actually reached the community yet, because communication is so poor here at the moment. The few people I've spoken to haven't actually heard that news yet. So, I think that grief will sort of still be coming over the next few days as people get out and speak to each other and learn about that news.”
There has also been concern in the area that while milking of cows had continued for the most part, local farmers had not been able to make contact with their factories to see if they were going to have their produce picked up, especially after missing their usual pickup on Tuesday night.
Check out this time sequence of the storm arriving in Balding Street, Mirboo North just opposite Baromi Park in the centre of town:
