Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews visited Shepparton’s Incident Control Centre (ICC) on Friday afternoon and said the next couple of days were going to be “a very challenging time”.
Mr Andrews was in the Goulburn Valley alongside Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp and Minister for Emergency Services Jacyln Symes.
They flew over flooding at Seymour and Benalla before arriving at the ICC, where emergency services are managing, and preparing for, a major flood event.
The Australian Defence Force is also in the Goulburn Valley to provide assistance.
“There's a big volume of water coming the way of Shepparton, Murchison and Mooroopna,” Mr Andrews said.
“I thought it was important to be here today and just to look people in the eye and ask them, ‘have you got everything you need?’ – and the good news is the answer is yes.
“But if that changes, we're here for the people of Shepp and indeed the Goulburn Valley, and I'm pretty sure we'll be back because these next two, three, four days are going to be a very, very challenging time.”
A major flood warning is in place for the Goulburn River at Shepparton and Murchison residents were told to evacuate on Friday afternoon.
The river at Shepparton is expected to exceed the moderate flood level early on Saturday morning and is likely to exceed the major flood level of 11 metres late on Saturday morning.
Further rises are likely and the river level may reach around 12 metres during Tuesday.
Member for Shepparton Suzanna Sheed said she was concerned that people weren’t taking the flood warning seriously.
She called for the community to stay informed and across emergency warnings, and not to assume what they saw in 1993 or 1974 will be the same – “because conditions have changed”.
“It's arriving slowly, in a sense, but it's going to come with a bang,” she said.
“By Tuesday, we're expecting major floods throughout Shepperton, and that has a really significant impact.
“There's been a sense in which we haven't wanted to alarm people too much earlier on, but now that all that rain has fallen and we're seeing what the river systems are doing – it's pretty clear that there's a major flood on its way.”
Mr Andrews’ said emergency services and the government would stand “shoulder-to-shoulder” with everyone impacted by flooding.
“There'll be a big clean-up job and then there'll obviously be support for individual families and businesses that have been affected,” he said.
“It will be a record flood event, both for number of communities affected and the number of houses affected as well.
“But the most important thing is we can clean up – we just have to make sure people are safe.”
A community information session is being held at the Shepparton Senior Citizens Centre in Welsford St at 7pm on Friday, October 14.