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February 16, 2024
Stephane’s slow road to recovery Stephane Vander Bruggen has been through a lot. Growing up in ‘privilege’ in Brussels, he had a happy childhood, but things rapidly turned bad as his formerly tight-knit family fell apart. Family tragedies, crippling addictions and his childhood dream of being an Olympian dashed, Stephane turned to writing. Initially writing to confront his own demons, he decided to publish his memoirs in the hope he could help other people who were going through depression, anxiety and tough times. With the support of Geelong Writers he is now set to release his debut book ‘I Was Not Built To Break’, which will be released on March 3. ■ Read Stephane’s harrowing story and
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subsequent recovery in this week’s Friday Feature on page 12.
Storm havoc hits hard By Justin Flynn Some of Geelong’s northern suburbs were battered by an intense summer storm that swept through the area on Tuesday afternoon, leaving thousands without power and prompting desperate calls to the SES for help. Lara was the worst hit with Corio SES Section Leader Community Engagement Emily Cooney saying the unit received about 140 calls for help. “These included approximately 85 jobs for trees or branches on roads or presenting hazards and more than 50 jobs involving property damage,” she said.
“The top three suburbs attended included Lara with 117 jobs, Anakie with 11 and Avalon with four. “The patience and understanding from the affected community has been invaluable. We’d like to encourage the community to be prepared for sudden storms – put aside some time to clear overhanging tree branches from around your home, secure items around the property like trampolines that could cause damage.” The storm appeared after a sweltering day where the mercury reached 41 degrees in Lara. Almost 6000 homes were without power on Tuesday with more than 2000 in Lara
and Corio still not connected by Wednesday afternoon, according to Powercor. One Lara resident said their power wasn’t reconnected until about 7.30am on Wednesday. “Our friend sent us footage from his security camera and was all done and over in three minutes and 52 seconds,” Brittany Bell said. “It was intense. Very wild and it all happened so quickly. We were surprised our trampoline didn’t fly away and then later we saw that others did.” Ms Bell said her five-year-old daughter was at Lara Primary School when the storm hit and she said it was “loud and scary, the lights flickered on and off” and that all students were
told to stay inside. “She hoped peoples’ damaged houses and fences could be fixed quickly and was sad about the trees,” Ms Bell said. The Bureau of Meteorology reported wind gusts of up to 122km/h at Avalon at 2.21pm. The extreme weather caused six transmission towers to collapse near Anakie. Powercor sent an emergency response vehicle to Lara Community Centre on Wednesday for locals to charge phones, use a wifi hotspot and get on-the-ground advice about the outages. At the peak of the outage, more than half a million homes and businesses statewide were left without power.
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