A luxury unoccupied home was destroyed in a landslide at McCrae, in the Mornington Peninsula, this week in an incident that left one council worker injured.
There are now a total of 20 homes blocked off on either side of the landslide after five more were added to the exclusion zone.
Residents Heather and Simon McKeon were given just 30 minutes to leave.
“The whole street is helping each other,” Simon said.
“When times are challenging, it is good to see people being positive.”
Authorities are yet to determine the cause.
“We still haven’t pinpointed the cause. There’s been nothing to suggest it’s any of those yet so nothing conclusive,” Mornington Peninsula Shire Mayor Anthony Marsh said.
Excess groundwater has been raised as a possible cause, but South East Water has tested its local mains network and hasn’t found any leaks.
“Flow tests, pressure test, doing leak detection street by street,” South East Water’s Lara Olsen said.
“From all of those results, it shows it’s not our water, but we’re not stopping there.”
The SES has taken over responsibility for the area and it’s unclear how long it may take for the exclusion zone to be lifted.
“We can’t rush it for obvious reasons … as soon as we can let people back in, we will,” Marsh said.
An information centre at Dromana remains open to affected residents, who are facing $70,000 fines if they are caught returning to their homes.
“The most important thing of the lot is to allow a serious amount of investigative work to understand what needs to be done in the future,” McKeon said.
