Upper Yarra
3 Tuesday, 18 April, 2017
Taint fears
5
A Mail News Group publication
Mail Covering the Upper Yarra Region of the Yarra Ranges Shire
Robocall blitz
20
Sports of all sorts
Phone: 5957 3700 Trades and Classifieds: 1300 666 808
Heroes standing tall On the eve of Anzac Day 2017, the Seville War Memorial plans have been unveiled to the public at a special ceremony. Among those to be honoured within the four glass panels, which will stand four metres high, is hometown hero, Captain George Ingram VC, MM. See full story on page 6. Pictured, from left, at the launch are president of the Seville Township Group, Derry Aulich; Casey MP Tony Smith, designer Wayne De Klijn and local historian, Anthony McAleer. 167301 Picture: PETER DOUGLAS
Road needs work By Kath Gannaway A windy section of the HealesvilleKooweerup Road where two people died and three others were injured on Sunday, 9 April, needs urgent surface works according to police. Witnesses to the crash, locals who rushed to help, and emergency services personnel from around the Valley faced an horrific scene. The vehicle ran off the road on a sweeping bend in the wet, rolled and crashed into a tree at around 2.30pm. Leading Senior Constable Scott Lardner from Yarra Ranges Highway Patrol who attended the crash, has rec-
ommended to VicRoads that the speed on the stretch of the most notorious of several bends be lowered from 80km/h to 70km/h, but said it needed more than that. He was contacted by VicRoads following the crash. “They asked me for an opinion and I’ve said what we don’t need is a kneejerk reaction that lowers the speed and that’s the end of it,” he said. “It’s not about speed all the time and real action needs to be taken on the road surface. “It’s a bad piece of road.“ According to VicRoads 3300 ve-
hicles a day use the road, which was resurfaced in 2013, with minor patching carried out in the past month. VicRoads data showed four crashes resulting in two serious injuries on the section between Dalry and Syme roads in the five years to 31 December, 2016, however that figure may be much higher according to people who regularly drive the road and live nearby. Healesville SES Controller Geoff Stott whose team were involved intensively as the rescue operation played out, said their unit has been called out a couple of times very recently to that section of road.
“It’s a bad corner,” he said. A local man who works regularly on the farm property adjacent to the crash scene estimated there was a crash or run-off on the corners every three weeks. “Every time it rains, you can see where someone has gone off,” he told the Mail. He said most times the people were lucky and ended up just being towed out of what could have been another tragedy. The presumption is that these nearmisses don’t make it to VicRoads’ database.
“People just come too fast and lose it on the corner,” he said, pointing out a scarred tree just metres from the devastation of Sunday’s fatality. “That one got knocked down two weeks ago,” he said. Just before Christmas, he said he went to the aid of an Upper Yarra woman travelling with three children who also had a lucky escape. “She ran off on the other bend and it was just sheer luck that she missed the trees,” he said. “It’s a particularly bad corner.” Continued on Page 3.
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