Mickleham Road will remain closed between Craigieburn and Greenvale until it is safe to open as the threat of private dam failure in Craigieburn continues.
The road is currently closed between Craigieburn Road in Craigieburn and Somerton Road in Greenvale due to flooding.
A Department of Transport spokesperson said the State Emergency Service (SES), Victoria Police and dam engineers were on the ground addressing the situation.
“At the moment we’ve set up detours, we’re encouraging motorists to use Aitken Boulevard or the Hume Highway, both of those detours are to the east,” the spokesperson said.
“It’s a constantly evolving situation as anything is [when there are] weather impacts.
“Mickleham Road will remain closed until it is safe to open it and hopefully that will be before too long, but over the weekend certainly we’re encouraging everyone to just follow roadside detours.”
Victoria SES chief Tim Wiebusch said crews were responding to two dam incidents in Craigieburn, the private dam on Mickleham Road and another on Cookes Road.
“[The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning] is incident controller and is working with Melbourne Water engineers, Victoria Police, SES, VicRoads to manage the consequences, which at this stage are largely road closures,” Mr Weibusch said.
Mickleham Road is also closed between Destination Drive and Mt Ridley Road.
According to SES, the largest of the dams is 200×300 metres wide.
Residents have taken to social media to post about their experience of the flooding.
One commenter said at 1pm today, it took 30 minutes to travel from Mickleham Road to Aitken Boulevard.
Another comment said “I didn’t think that road could get any worse”.
More to come…
