Traumatised residents are coming to grips with a wave of destruction left by a storm front that sent trees through homes and has caused life-threatening floods across Victoria.
Brad Wynd, who has lived at Emerald in Melbourne's outer east for four decades, spent a sleepless night hearing trees come down around him before one crashed right through the roof of his home.
"I heard a few cracks and obviously that was the trees going down at the back, but half an hour later I heard the big fella, this one here on the roof," he said.
The devastating damage to his home came just weeks before he was due to move out after selling the property, and sets back plans he had to move closer to his family.
With mobile phone and internet services down, he is worried for the friends he has still been unable to contact.
The State Emergency Service (SES) has received 6,500 calls for assistance across the state, and warned it could be "several days" before the backlog of calls can be cleared.
There have been dozens of rescues, and almost 400 reports of building damage.
More than 160,000 homes and businesses were still without power by Thursday night, with energy providers saying it could be days before all outages were fixed.
Steve Brown from Ausnet said conditions were still too dangerous for crews to access some areas.
"We had a very precarious incident where one of our trucks was actually crushed by a tree last night so we had to pull all our crews out of the dangerous area while the weather front went through," he said.
In the township of Trentham, north-west of Melbourne, local water authority Coliban Water said it was urging residents not to drink the water as a precautionary measure.
It issued a do not drink warning from 7:00pm Thursday night due to concerns about bursts in the water mains which might compromise the safety of drinking water.
In the Gippsland town of Traralgon, residents have been forced to flee their homes in boats after the rapidly rising floodwaters engulfed communities.
Late this afternoon a man in his 60s was found dead in at Starlings Lane, near Sale, after police were notified about a car submerged in water.
Like Mr Wynd, Lilydale resident Carolyn Scott spent the night awake, huddled with her family as she heard trees come down around her.
"It was unbelievable, the noise was just incredible," she said.
"I've never heard anything like it, I thought all the windows were just going to blow in because they were all just shaking at the one time."
This morning, she emerged onto a street strewn with trees and debris.
"You could just see so much because all the trees had been sort of stripped of all the leaves," she said.
"And it was just so bright and it was just mess everywhere, just trees and trunks all the way up the street."
Mother and child rescued by police
Overnight, police rescued an injured mother and her young son at Olinda, in the Dandenong Ranges, after a tree crashed through the roof of their house.
The mother called Triple Zero just after 11:00pm saying she and her son had become separated in the house, which was extensively damaged.
A police unit made its way to the house on foot and rescued the pair.
Sergeant Paul Phillips of Victoria Police said it was a horrific night.
He said police officers got as close as they could by road then used torches to hike through the forest as trees were falling around them.
The mother was in shock.
"She had a nasty head wound and needed an ambulance … pretty quickly," he said.
"And the son had obviously been through a fair bit as well so he was quite shocked as well."
A paramedic who was on his way to the scene narrowly avoided serious injury when his MICA vehicle was struck by a falling tree at Sherbrooke.
The tree landed on the rear of the vehicle, and then blocked the path of an ambulance which had also been despatched.
Andrew Burns from Ambulance Victoria said the staff were very shaken up.
"A senior staff member said it's probably the worst thing he's experienced in 35 years in the job," he said.
One intensive care ambulance was a write-off and the other car was trapped by fallen trees around them.
SES state commander Jackson Bell said crews had been forced to withdraw from some areas due to treacherous conditions.
"We've had a number of calls for assistance for trees onto houses and also a lot of buildings impacted with leaking roofs," he said.
"Unfortunately some of the strong winds have actually prevented us from getting to properties to assist with those requests."
The severe weather has prevented the Spirit of Tasmania 2 ferry from departing from Melbourne.
TT-Line said conditions in Port Phillip Bay meant the ferry cannot safely leave its berth at Port Melbourne which, in turn, has prevented the Spirt 1 from Devonport from docking and unloading.
