DAMAGED Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) administration offices and research laboratories de-roofed during a freak Good Friday storm near Merredin will be repaired.
DPIRD regional director Pam I’Anson said this week DPIRD director general Ralph Addis had indicated the administration centre, on the corner of Great Eastern Highway and Crooks Road, previously known as the Merredin Dryland Research Institute, would be repaired and its laboratories re-equipped.
“Our director general has made it clear that Merredin is a very important location for the department,” Ms I’Anson said.
“There is no thought of closing it down and relocating staff to wherever.
“It is in a low rainfall area so it is very important for the State from the perspective of conducting research to assist agriculture in low rainfall areas.”
Winds of up to 113 kilometres per hour were recorded by the Bureau of Meteorology after it issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the Central Wheatbelt and parts of the Gascoyne regions at 5.19pm on Good Friday and tore the roofing iron and timber battens off the north wing of the administration centre.
Some of the iron sheets were dumped in a central open-air courtyard but most were deposited in the front car park near the main entrance on the opposite side of the building.
On the way over the flying sheets damaged the ridge roofing on the southern wing and a section of that was also blown off.
The accompanying downpour caused sections of exposed ceiling to collapse and destroyed electrical and scientific equipment in three workrooms which also doubled as laboratories, Ms I’Anson said.
“The building is uninhabitable,” she said.
“Some of the ceilings have come down and we can’t have people in there because there’s a risk some of the other ceilings (loosened by wind and rain) could fall on them.”
Ms I’Anson said she was trying to find suitable rental replacement office premises in Merredin for 27 DPIRD staff and hoped that would be finalised this week.
The damaged centre had also housed five Parks and Wildlife Service staff from the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.
“Hopefully they can be co-located with our DPIRD staff somewhere in Merredin too because there’s a synergy with what they do and what we do,” she said.
It was likely the staff would need to be housed in rented offices until repairs and refurbishing of the DPIRD centre was completed, but it was too early to say how long that may be, Ms I’Anson said.
There was no estimate of the cost of repairs at this stage.
While the administration centre bore the brunt of the storm, there was also damage to other buildings including a workshop shed destroyed by a falling tree at the research station on the other side of the Great Eastern Highway.
“Most of the other damage, apart from the tree across the shed – which will have to be replaced but luckily the contents inside was not damaged – was fairly minor, roller doors blown in, that sort of thing,” Ms I’Anson said.
“Our staff spent a couple of days cleaning up which has delayed preparations for some of our field trials, but by the end of (this) week we should be back on track with the trials.
“While it was Good Friday, it was a good Friday in the sense that no one was there when it happened.
“One of our staff reported it (damage) after driving past at 5.38pm and seeing it.
“The best we can establish is that it must have happened at about 5.30pm.
“On a normal working day people would have been packing up to go home and some would have been leaving by the front door near where the roof landed.
“I was out there at 8.30am the next morning and on the way there (from Northam) I couldn’t believe the amount of damage I was seeing.
“If it had gone through five kilometres to the east it would have been a direct hit on Merredin.
“I doubt if there would have been much of Merredin left.
“I think Merredin’s lucky we took one on its behalf.”
As reported in Farm Weekly last week, the freak storm caused a swathe of damage across the Central Wheatbelt from Kalannie, where the roof of the local sport and recreation club was also blown off, through Ballidu, Trayning, Kununoppin, Merredin, Bruce Rock and through to Hyden.
Farmers had sheds, silos and water tanks damaged or blown down and fences knocked over by fallen trees.
Many local roads were closed by fallen trees and on its Facebook page last week Merredin Shire was offering free firewood to anyone who wanted to collect it as council workers cleaned up the mess.
More than 4000 kilometres of electricity network infrastructure was damaged by trees falling across power lines and poles snapping under the strain and almost 5000 Wheatbelt homes and businesses lost electricity supply.
By Easter Monday power was restored to all but about 400 isolated properties, Western Power said.