SES units busy in wild winds

WILD, wet and windy weather ran State Emergency Service volunteers off their feet last week.
Pakenham SES received more than 40 calls, the majority being caused by the high winds.
Some gusts were reported at more than 100 kilometres per hour.
Of the three severely windy days, last Tuesday was the busiest, more than 20 calls for assistance being received.
Pakenham SES spokesman Stephen Monro said most of the jobs involved trees that had fallen across roads.
He said there had been a small number of calls reporting trees on power lines as well.
“Building damage also featured regularly,” Mr Monro said.
“The areas hit hardest were Berwick, Pakenham and Narre Warren. Emerald SES was also very busy in their area.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen weather like this yet, through the constant stream of pager messages, our crews did very well with the workload.”
The new Narre Warren SES unit, now fully up and running, was given a large portion of jobs that months ago would have been assigned to Pakenham SES.
The Narre Warren unit helped to spread out the workload between neighbouring units Frankston, Pakenham, Springvale and Emerald.