Feature
When Melbourne's four-seasons-in-a-day weather turns dangerous — a summer heatwave, an October storm cell, a February fire day — a small army of volunteers and professionals goes to work. Here are the crews behind the warnings.
When a southerly buster rakes across Port Phillip Bay and tears roofs off houses in Frankston, it is orange-clad VES volunteers who arrive with tarps and chainsaws. They run 24/7 out of more than 40 units across greater Melbourne and are the primary agency for storm, flood and landslide response in Victoria.
Every severe thunderstorm warning, flood watch and total fire ban forecast for Melbourne is issued by BOM meteorologists working from the Docklands office. Their radar at Laverton is the reason locals can see a rain band an hour out and plan around it.
On days when the mercury pushes 40°C and a hot dry northerly funnels down from the Mallee, CFA brigades ring Melbourne's outer suburbs from Bacchus Marsh to the Yarra Valley. Volunteer crews defend the urban fringe on the worst fire weather days of the year.
Melbourne's bay and ocean beaches, from St Kilda to Portsea, are patrolled by red and yellow-capped Life Saving Victoria volunteers all summer. They pull swimmers out of rips at Gunnamatta and warn the crowd off when a marine wind warning hits the bay.
The people who keep the Yarra, Maribyrnong and Elwood main drain from swallowing houses when an October downpour hits are Melbourne Water's flood and drainage teams. They design and operate the retarding basins that quietly absorb the worst of a wet spring.
Melbourne's heatwaves are its deadliest weather event. Ambulance Victoria surge crews staff extra shifts through 40°C stretches and respond to heat stress calls across the metro area, particularly in the western suburbs where the temperature runs hottest.