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An SES hero who left his home to help his neighbours following a night of destructive storms in Victoria returned to find it destroyed, with his family trapped inside.

Ben Owen has been a member of the SES for 17 years and went to check on his neighbours this morning, but got a call to return home after a tree collapsed onto his Cockatoo house in the Dandenong Ranges.

LIVE UPDATES: Berejiklian fronts ICAC as wild weather hits multiple states

https://twitter.com/gillianlant/status/1453882766592933890

His wife and two daughters, aged 12 and 14, were trapped inside for some time until they were able to be safely removed.

"I went to check the neighbours were alright and I thought 'I better get out and help the SES'," he told 3AW's Neil Mitchell.

READ MORE: 'It's carnage out there': Destructive storms ravage Victoria

"Not five minutes up the road I got a call from my wife to say a tree was on the house."

Mr Owen, who is an SES volunteer for Emerald, said he had to break his windows in order to rescue his family.

"We had to break windows with the help of a neighbour to get them out of the house, so it was quite traumatic," he said.

"I couldn't even run up my driveway. I had to run through next door, around the shed, up the back and over the fence to get to the back part of the house and get to where they were."

READ MORE: Great-grandmother's lucky escape after roof crashes down in storm

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Mr Owen and his family will have to stay with his parents until the house can be rebuilt.

The house has been ravaged with broken plaster and furniture scattered everywhere.

"The house has been destroyed," he said.

"Open the front door and there's a tree in the lounge room. You can't see the kitchen at the other end of the same room."

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a hoverbike.

A Japanese start-up listed this futuristic vehicle, called the XTurismo Limited Edition, for sale in Japan on Wednesday.

Test video shows the $904,700 single-rider hoverbike flying successfully around an empty racetrack.

READ MORE: Residents could be without power until Monday after wild weather

The "XTURISMO Limited Edition" uses a combustion engine and four battery-powered motors.

ALI Technologies says the vehicle can fly for about 40 minutes before requiring a charge and can hover at speeds of around 96 kilometres per hour.

"Until now, the choice has been to move on the ground or at scale in the sky," ALI Technologies chief executive Daisuke Katano said.

"We hope to offer a new method of movement."

NASA is debating whether to try to fix a jammed solar panel on its newly launched Lucy spacecraft, en route to explore an unprecedented number of asteroids.

The problem cropped up shortly after the spacecraft's October 16 liftoff on a 12-year journey.

After measuring the electric current this week, NASA reported Wednesday that one of Lucy’s two giant, circular solar panels is only between 75 per cent and 95 per cent extended.

READ MORE: NASA's Lucy mission has launched to explore never-before-seen asteroids

A lanyard is holding it in place.

Any attempt at reopening the wing – which is seven metres in diameter – would not occur before mid-November.

So far, the problem has not affected Lucy's outbound flight, so there's no rush to figure out the next step, officials said.

Everything else on the spacecraft – already six million kilometres away – is working properly.

The mission's lead scientist, Hal Levison of Southwest Research Institute, said the team is encouraged that the combined power from both solar panels "is keeping the spacecraft healthy and functioning."

READ MORE: Gladys Berejiklian faces intense questioning in first appearance at ICAC inquiry

“It's too early to determine longer range implications to the entire mission,” Levison said in an email Thursday.

While the problem is concerning, “our team is working this very diligently and carefully to find a workable solution,” Levison said.

The $1.3 billion mission seeks to explore seven so-called Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit around the sun and another space rock closer to home.

Lucy should swoop within 965 kilometres of each target.

READ MORE: Residents could be without power until Monday after wild weather hits Victoria

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