Help flooded in Narre Warren SES crews tackled the floods to respond to about 700 calls for assistance. Photo: Donna Oates

By Nicole Williams
NARRE Warren SES crews were inundated with emergency calls on the weekend.
Narre Warren SES unit controller Tim Howell said the crew responded to about 700 calls – and the flooding was arguably the biggest incident since the Black Saturday bushfires.
“With this amount of rain, it was unprecedented,” Mr Howell said. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my 14 years with the SES.”
Between 5pm Friday and midnight Sunday, the SES rescued about 15 people from cars stuck in floodwaters, helped evacuate the elderly, responded to calls for sandbags, helped with damaged buildings and searched for a woman believed to be stranded in water on Centre Road, Narre Warren.
The woman was found safe and well.
“With flash flooding, the major thing was there was no loss of life,” Mr Howell said. “You’ve just got to be so careful around floodwaters.”
The calls started almost immediately when the storm hit on Friday night and continued every two minutes for about six hours, Mr Howell said.
“Life threatening instances and tasks took priority on Friday,” he said.
On Saturday, the SES began responding to other calls for assistance and reports of damage.
“We were going around trying to deal with calls for assistance and trying to assess what was happening,” he said.
The crew responded to their final call at 11.45pm Sunday to a damaged building in Cranbourne.
Mr Howell commended the many SES volunteers and those who took it upon themselves to help neighbours.
Resources were stretched to the limit and the two Narre Warren crews were joined by SES crews from Nunawading, Hastings and Northcote, as well as CFA volunteers and Victoria Police, Mr Howell said.