Weather damage a warning of winter

Bunbury’s State Emergency Services manager has described weekend storm damage as a timely reminder of the need to prepare homes for winter.

Chris Widmer said he knew of at least 12 callouts over the weekend, caused by heavy storms early on Saturday morning.

The majority of these were labour-intensive jobs due to trees falling on roofs, he said, and the damage was spread around Greater Bunbury rather than being localised.

Mr Widmer said 85 per cent of the SES’ jobs from last year were preventable and with further storms on the way, he encouraged people to clean up around their homes.

“People need to take this as a wake-up call,” he said.

Bunbury’s official weather station recorded 34.2mm of rain between 3am on Saturday and 9am yesterday.

The heaviest of this rain was early on Saturday morning when 10mm fell in about an hour.

There was also wind gusts of nearly 80kmh recorded several times on Saturday.

A Western Power spokesman said a tree was blown onto a major power line that affected power supply to about 5500 customers in Australind on Saturday.

Overall, the spokesman believed Western Power’s network coped with the storm.

“The network in the South West has performed well during the severe weather event that crossed the coast on Saturday morning,” he said.

Further storms were forecast for last night and this morning.