Hail havoc

By Bridget Brady
CASEY escaped the brunt of the weekend storms, but a local State Emergency Service (SES) crew was kept busy with calls as people arrived home from the long weekend.
The Narre Warren SES responded to about 51 calls for help in the Casey area, including Berwick, Narre Warren, Hallam and Cranbourne.
Unit controller for the Narre Warren SES, Tim Howell, said most of the calls for assistance were for flood and building damage, while there were a few collapsed ceilings.
One of the teams assisted the busy Knox area with the clean up, after the storms wreaked havoc around Melbourne on Saturday afternoon.
Mr Howell said he expected a few more jobs to trickle in throughout the week.
He asked people to be patient and consider whether their situation was an emergency before calling the SES.
“At the end of the day, we’re all volunteers and we’ve done our best to deal with these tasks and we do ask people to show some patience while the emergency side of the responses are taken care of.”
Statewide, the SES responded to about 7000 calls for help, Mr Howell said.
He thanked Casey residents for their patience and ensured them the SES did its best to respond to emergency services.
For emergency flood and storm help call the SES on 132 500.