Flood chaos hits Victoria as an entire town of Rochester threatens to be engulfed

Major cities in Victoria are fighting to protect their homes from flooding that the state has not seen in over a decade.

Residents in northwest Victoria have been crushed by the rain overnight, with residents of Kilmore reportedly fighting their way through raw sewage that supposedly spewed onto flooded streets.

State emergency workers in the Loddon Malley area have made more than 200 calls for help, and the worst is yet to come.

A Goulburn Valley Water spokesman Steve Nash denied that the brown mud spouting from the sewer pipes was raw sewage.

“What’s happened is we’ve had a storm surge of stormwater in our sewer system. We had a report from the public this morning that raw sewage was coming out of some manholes in an area in Kilmore,” he told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell just before noon.

“We’ve inspected it and rainwater is being pumped out… the on-site inspection shows that rainwater is coming out at the reported location.”

Mr Nash assured the Kilmore community that there were no health concerns related to the discharge.

“It’s just rainwater pumping out,” he said.

Desperate homeowners turned on the live radio because water threatened to flood their homes.

In Melbourne, the water continues to rise and parks in the metropolitan area are turned into rivers.

City workers have been asked to stay at home, and some primary schools are reporting flooding at their gates.

Students at St Kevin’s College have switched to distance learning for fear that the Yarra River, which flows through the heart of Melbourne’s CBD, will flood.

The school’s Heyington campus, next to the Yarra in Toorak, has previously suffered from flooding in 2005 and 2009.

Reports have emerged that The Alfred Hospital has been hit by flood water, which has entered the hospital’s basement.

Victoria’s emergency commissioner Andrew Crisp has warned that the state’s flood risk will not end after today, or even after this weekend.

Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell ‘we’re in this for a while’ as the state is experiencing a ‘campaign flood event’.

“There’s still low development, so we’ll probably see that again next Wednesday/Thursday,” he told Mitchell.

“The agency says we will continue to see this cycle for the next six to eight weeks.”

Mr Crisp urged Victorians not to drive today if possible.

“If you don’t have to be on the road today, please don’t go on the road, because it’s not just about the flooding, it’s about the trees.”

West of Melbourne, in Point Cook, rescuers jumped into a kayak to try to rescue a cat stranded under a bridge.

Dramatic footage from local news service Wyndham TV shows ‘Yumi’ the cat swimming for life after it was eventually swept away by the floodwaters.

The owner managed to get the cat to safety when it was swept away by the floodwaters.

Roads in the Melbourne suburbs to the north have been flooded, causing chaos in those areas.

Major highways, including the Calder and Midland, are closed and more road closures are expected in the coming days.

Poor conditions make driving on major roads such as the Hume Freeway, Northern Highway, Midland Highway and Calder Highway treacherous, especially in the northern areas around Seymour, Bendigo and Echuca.

Satellite images capture a huge band of clouds stretching 5,000 kilometers from the tropical Indian Ocean to continental Australia – with several states to be affected, including the main Victoria and Tasmania, plus southern New South Wales.

Bendigo, with a population of over 120,000, has been ravaged by rain, recording 65.6mm in one day, compared to around 40mm in Melbourne.

A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Meteorology said on Thursday that some towns in northern Victoria could expect up to 80mm of rain per day by the end of Thursday.

In Mildura, in northern Victoria on the border with New South Wales, houseboats have been moved to the middle of the Murray River in the hopes they won’t perish from rising waters.

Meanwhile, sandbags are underway in the city of Rochester, in central Victoria, which is expected to be essentially ‘cut in half’ as the nearby Campapse River floods. It is feared that as many as 700 homes could be flooded.

On Thursday, the SES warned that the water peak in the city is not expected to hit until Saturday.

Authorities told a gathering of about 200 people in Rochester on Wednesday night that the most likely scenario is that the city will face a flood of one in 50 years, but in a less likely scenario it would see a flood of one in 200 years. can have. .

The locals have been told that the water can rise up to 115 meters above sea level.

Mackay Street in the city has reportedly already seen flooding, with the Campaspe River expected to burst its banks.

Rochester residents and businesses have worked tirelessly to fill sandbags as the wet weather continues.

The city was devastated by another flood in 2011 – the worst ever for the area.

Patients had to be evacuated from the local hospital as the Campaspe River reached record heights.

Forecasters have warned that a large band of clouds is being dragged across southeastern Australia, causing massive amounts of tropical moisture to flow over Victoria.

That moisture will set off a period of heavy rain that will soak Victoria through Friday morning.

Showers have already started to increase in some central and western parts of the state, with Melbourne dropping 8mm by midday on Wednesday.

It will get worse for the rest of the day, with wind and rain increasing as a cold front sweeps across the state’s western districts.

On Thursday, the cold front will expand further east, with severe weather hitting central, northern and northeastern parts of the state.