Well, for most people a long weekend is a chance to relax and put your feet up, go camping, or catch up on jobs around the house. That was my intention as well, but the onset of winter storms changed all that.
On the Friday night we spent most of the night cleaning up a large tree that had fallen on a Volvo and was blocking a driveway. Then throughout Saturday and Sunday various fallen trees and roof jobs had to be attended to, including pulling down a TV aerial on a 3m tower which was threatening to come crashing down in the wind at any moment.
The highlight here was a three storey block of flats that had had a large tree fall down on the roof. The tree had been removed by arborists, but the gaping holes in the roof remained. At first we thought we would need a cherry-picker to place a tarp on the roof, but looking at the access to the property, this option was soon ruled out. Then we came up with the idea of laying the tarp from inside the roof. We gained access from the manhole in the ceiling and set about rearranging the tiles so we only had one or two big holes to cover. Running a safety line along the ridge capping and anchoring it back through the holes in the roof, I was able to safely move around on the roof and roughly position the tarpaulin. Once the guy lines were thrown down to my team mates on the ground, it could be move into a more ideal position. As the last corner went into place I crawled back under the tarp, and back into the roof cavity.
By Sunday afternoon, most of the tree jobs were given to tree contractors and we concentrated on roofs. The reason for this was that we had to clear up all our local jobs so we could sent off to the Central Coast who had been hit worse than us.
I spent Monday to Wednesday working out of Gosford with a team from Marrickville. Our first job was a massive tree that had fallen on a house. It took half a day to clear enough of the tree to make it to the front door, and prepare the rest of the tree for lifting by crane. The crane arrived mid afternoon and then Energy Australia arrived up to turn off the power, but unfortunately the technician was not authorised to turn off the 11kV lines and the operation had to be postponed to the following morning.
At 7:30 the next day it was all systems go. The road was blocked, the crane was in place and Energy Australia turned off the power. We had a second team turn up and as each trunk of the tree was lifted onto the road, it was quickly cut up and place on the footpath, just in time for the next trunk to be lowered. It took 5 lifts to clear the tree and reveal the roof damage which turned out to 2 broken tiles and some bent guttering.
The owner of the house was very lucky, as the tree only grazed his bedroom, but another metre or two would have seen it come down straight onto his bed. So after a day and a half our first job was finished and all other jobs could not compare in scale or complexity.
We finished around 4pm on Wednesday afternoon and drove back to Sydney to grab some sleep and get ready to go back to the office on Thursday, full of the great feeling you get when you know you have done something good for the community.
All the pictures from the storms.
Tags: SES
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