I’m happy we’ve got a bye this week now.
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Been 24 hours so far. We’ve heard the station in Lilydale has got structural damage, hence the long delay.
The number of trees down in Croydon (Central, North and South), Chirnside Park and Wonga Park is incredible. Absolute carnage…
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I’ve got room, and I’ve seen shed loads of dead trees fallen too.
Future me needs the wood 
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Glass half full.
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I know it is not going to be of any help, but wishing everyone affected all the best.
Stay warm if you can.
Some people in Traralgon had to evacuate because of flooding in Traralgon Creek but it wasn’t Covid that stopped a Recovery Centre being opened in Sale. It just wasn’t needed. Most people in the Valley would find somewhere to stay down there especially as there is more accommodation down there anyway.
Great Alpine Road was closed last night and still closed but hopefully opening soon.
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Thinking of you all down there. Lived in the Dandenong ranges for 25 years so know the problems you’re facing. The best thing we did was purchase a Honda 7.5kva generator that we could plug into the house (properly wired by electrician) that ran everything bar electric stove & air con. I know this is not much help right now, but would highly recommend for the future. We had many occasions where we were without power for days & it was a life saver.
Hope things are resolved as quickly as possible for you all. Take care.
Edit: I will just add that we were on tank water so no power = no water.
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Evacuation centre was not needed during the Canberra bushfires as people took them in.
I was without power for close to 2 weeks as my substation burnt down.
However it was summer, daylight saving, could go to office and even walk a block away to friends who had power.
Stay safe all.
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I think that he actually meant a $60 tranny. Available at a drug riddled inner city suburb near you.
More seriously, consider that an electric kettle draws 2000W (2kW). Most other household appliances draw less (and increasingly less thanks to LED lighting and electronics), but my thoughts are that 3-4kW minimum is required to keep essential appliances running (assuming gas cooking and gas / wood heating, you need to rethink if you have only electric cooking / heating.)
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I have a generator but the fkg spark plug lead snapped while I was trying to start it, so no dice for me. I’m not too badly off, wood heater, gas cooktop, got all the perishables out of the fridge packed in ice in eskies on the verandah. Have to charge my phone from the car though, and I can’t work remotely cos the signal’s too weak and the phone battery would last about 12 seconds. So I’m spending annual leave to sit in the cold and dark, which does not exactly thrill me. Getting the same ‘1pm 13 June’ estimate for getting the power back as everyone seems to be. Looks like a placeholder to me, we’ll see what happens.
No damage to the property, though one of my trees did fall directly on the neighbour’s expensive automatic gate controller, oops…
Was walking the dog today and saw this though, it’s a fair sort of wind that can blow a brick fence over.
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Power back at 12.40.
You farking beauty!!
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This is incredible footage. A carpark in Traralgon getting flooded in `15 minutes.
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36 hours and counting.
It’s fkn cold…
I used to spend a fair bit of time around Buxton. A couple of brothers up there were renowned for cutting up any tree that fell on the road reserves. They’d add it to one end of their 100 m long woodstack, and take to burn from the other end. So the stuff they were burning was alway years- dry. Lots of it was manna gum which no matter how long dead and grey when collected needs to be split and stacked to dry for a year before burning - that stuff is alway wet inside in an unsplit log.
I’m bayside. My lights flickered a few times during the strong winds, so the energy company can expect a complaint letter.
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Yeah that’s a good point re dry in the middle. I’ve got a stack of wood I thought was dry out the back here but after cutting it up you can still feel the damp in the inside.
Looks like I’m buying wood this year!
Mum and Dad got their power back early this morning after being without it since 10:30PM Wednesday. Lucky, otherwise they’d have had to throw away a lot of frozen food. Fingers crossed everyone else without power has it restored today…
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Yeah it should be split into the sizes you want to burn and then stacked to dry. Some species work ok (well-dried red gum) but for many, you can’t split and burn immediately. You should really only burn super-dry wood, otherwise it smokes.