Victoria’s State Emergency Service (SES) has received more than 1500 calls for help and deployed additional rescue crews to Victorian towns as major flooding continues to threaten the regions.
Emergency evacuation orders were issued for parts of Seymour, Rochester and Yea overnight, and nine current watch and act alerts remain across central Victoria.
Rochester was spared the worst of the floods with levels today expected to peak one-metre lower than the town’s devastating floods in October 2022.
“A bit of a one-eye sleep to be honest,” local Steve Parke told 9News.
“We were a bit worried, only 15 months ago we copped this.”
In the last 48 hours the Victoria’s SES received 1683 requests for assistance, including 831 flood-related requests.
Most calls came from Bendigo with 196 requests followed by Kilmore with 115 requests.
North of Bendigo in Goornong, dozens of homes were inundated with flood waters after the Campese River swelled to 114mm.
In the Southern end of the Goulburn Valley, flood waters in Seymour peaked at 6.8 metres last night, resulting in up more than 12 homes lost.
An evacuation order remains in place for Seymour while flood waters currently sit at 5.8 metres, with residents able to return once levels hit 5 metres later today.
Major flooding is still possible in Murchison and Shepparton overnight with heavy rain forecast later tonight.
Premier Jacinta Allan said emergency services were unable to conduct formal damage assessments until floods recede.
She said it will be a tough recovery for what has been “another difficult emergency”.
“The way the community has responded to protect people in that area is a strong one,” she told reporters today.
Residents across regional Victoria were told it was too late to leave as floodwaters continued to rise into the early morning.
The warnings came after a 74-year-old woman was rescued from floodwaters overnight.
The evacuation order for low-lying parts of Seymour remains in place.
(9 NEWS)
