Emergency services brace for further movement at McCrae after $2.3m house collapsed down cliff on Monday
Victoria’s emergency services are bracing for further movement in a landslide on the state’s Mornington Peninsula ahead of expected storms, after a house collapsed on Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning, a $2.3m house on the Mornington Peninsula collapsed down a cliff in a landslide. A council worker injured in the incident remained in a stable condition at Frankston hospital on Wednesday, the health service confirmed.
A VicEmergency alert issued on Wednesday morning for the McCrae area said site assessments would continue, along with monitoring for further impact caused by forecast storms.
An SES spokesperson confirmed 11 houses in an “exclusion zone” had been deemed uninhabitable while authorities were on site.
The State Emergency Service controller, Mark Daw, told 3AW radio on Wednesday morning houses had been evacuated.
He said authorities were concerned about the potential of 20mm of rain on Wednesday.
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Daw said he expected Point Nepean Road would be closed for at least a week, with geotechnical engineers working to mitigate risks at the site.
“The residents will probably not be able to come back in their house[s], just on the chance that more slips could occur,” he said.
Daw said houses within 150m of the landslide site had been evacuated as a safety measure.
“We know there probably will be another slip, but we’re unsure how much,” he said.
The owner of the house, Nick Moran, a Melbourne-based IT entrepreneur, said in a written statement on Tuesday his family’s thoughts were with the injured council employee.
“We are very grateful that nobody died today,” he said.
Moran said his holiday home had been hit by a “30-tonne landslide” from higher up the steep hill a week earlier.
“I’m not even sure how to comprehend what has occurred and how lucky we are,” he said in an online post.
“It looks like it has destroyed our house which doesn’t matter in the overall scheme of things but narrowly missed my daughter and wife let alone the stack of people we entertained there over the break.”
The house was vacated after that landslide, which was followed by the collapse Tuesday morning.
A Mornington Peninsula Shire council worker, aged in his 50s, suffered injuries to his lower limbs after he was forced to jump from the second storey of the house as it started to slide down the cliff face in the collapse. He was at the property undertaking an inspection relating to the earlier slip.
David Kennedy, a professor at the University of Melbourne who researches coastal landforms, said the location of the landslide was an old sea cliff.
“The rock type there is a granite that is 380 million years old so it’s really highly weathered. And it’s steep,” he said.
Kennedy said the “biggest lesson” was considering the shape of the landscape when building.
“Building areas on old sea cliffs, which is what’s been being done.. this is an area which is going to have an increased risk,” he said.
“We also had the big dump rain on the weekend that definitely didn’t help … if we become wetter, we’re definitely going to start to see more slips.”
The Mornington Peninsula shire mayor, Anthony Marsh, on Tuesday said the council had informed the property’s owner and their insurers of work needed after the first incident on 5 January. Marsh said at that point the house was vacated.
“There was potentially the presence of water … and there was concern about the stability of the site,” he said.
Authorities disconnected utility services in nearby properties on Tuesday and the Nepean Highway was closed between McCrae and Dromana.
Marsh said the area on Penny Lane would be closed until at least 7pm on Wednesday.
“Those investigations are ongoing, but there’s obviously unstable land, so we need to work out exactly what’s going on there,” Marsh said.
“It’s devastating for the owners and it must be a huge concern for the close residents around.”
The shire on Tuesday established a community relief hub in Dromana for affected residents.
