Tuesday, 20 February 2024

Ministers statements: fire and storm events

Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (14:09): I rise to update the house on the extreme and damaging weather event that tore through our state last Tuesday. At the outset can I on behalf of the government and indeed the Parliament send our collective condolences to the family of the individual, the farmer in the Mirboo North area, who lost his life during that storm event. Our thoughts remain with him, his family, his loved ones and indeed all the communities across the state who have moved into that rebuilding and recovery phase.

We did see last Tuesday a day that was predicted to be a catastrophic fire and wind event, and that is exactly what we saw tear through the state. We saw the fire danger rating be at that level for only the second time since the 2009 period. As I said earlier, we saw many customers lose power. The latest advice I have is there are now around 3600 people without power as a result of these storms, and we will continue to support those families and individuals as the work is done by hardworking individuals to get the connections redone.

I also want to point out that there are damage assessments still underway, but we know that there are 46 homes that are lost – one in Dadswells Bridge and 45 in Pomonal – and I want to acknowledge the work of the member for Lowan as well on behalf of her community. There are a number of homes with damage assessments in the Gippsland and south-eastern region, and at least 30 homes have been destroyed or are uninhabitable. We do expect that number to increase as the damage assessments are undertaken.

Just finally, I want to thank the emergency services across the board – in partnership with state government and local government – for the work that they have done. The recovery process will take some time, and we will support them along the way.