As floodwaters threatened the NSW Northern Rivers region, domestic violence survivors were faced with the reality that they may come face-to-face with their perpetrators at evacuation centres.
The impacts were felt from the coast at Ballina to the inland areas around Lismore, and local women seeking safety from their perpetrators had to be relocated from one safe haven to another.
One refuge housing multiple families had to be moved twice before ending up in an evacuation centre with hundreds of other residents.
"Being in an evacuation centre is a traumatising experience and people in family and domestic violence are already highly traumatised," Women Up North Housing Executive Officer, Jillian Knight-Smith, said.
Staff worried that some of the people they supported were "at risk of suicide".
Ms Knight-Smith said she had been calling clients during the week to see what support they needed, but they never expected their flood strategy wouldn't be enough.
"We weren't assuming that all of Lismore would go under," she said.
The family violence housing service Women Up North currently helps about 150 women and children in the Northern Rivers area, including in the flood-affected areas of Ballina, Lismore, Ballina and Byron.
Most of the people they support are already considered homeless.
The peak body for specialist domestic and family violence, Domestic Violence NSW (DVNSW), said emergency responses needed to be better considered by authorities.
"We need to make sure we have emergency responses in place that are cognisant of domestic and family violence and that address the safety issues of rehousing people in that circumstance," DVNSW Chair Annabelle Daniel said.
"In terms of immediate responses, sometimes people might come into contact with perpetrators and there need to be specific measures for that."
Back in Lismore, Women Up North's main office had been up-ended by floodwaters and it is expected to take about a month to get it up and running again.
It was a place where family violence survivors could meet and yarn.
In the days following the floods, the chief executive personally pried open the filing cabinets to destroy all the sensitive waterlogged records of their clients.
Her biggest concern was whose hands they would get into.
DV spike expected
For years global studies have shown that in the wake of floods, hurricanes and bushfires, domestic and family violence incidents and disclosures increase.
A study into the aftermath of the Victorian Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 found almost half of the women interviewed were experiencing family violence, half for the very first time.
It noted there had been a more than 50 per cent rise in domestic violence in New Zealand after the Canterbury earthquake, while in the US after Hurricane Katrina there was a 98 per cent increase in "physical victimisation" of women.
Yet the peak body DVNSW Chair said more than a decade on some of the strategies identified during the Victorian Black Saturday disaster have not been implemented across borders.
"I think learnings should be implemented even if they come from other jurisdictions," Ms Daniel said.
The Victorian bushfire study found that when women disclosed the abuse they were often dismissed by first responders who were already under intense pressure.
What hasn't been measured before is the impact of a pandemic on top of a natural disaster.
Ms Knight estimates it is going to get "really bad" in the next three months, as other services begin to shift their focus elsewhere.
Ms Daniel said domestic violence disclosures occurred during these times in part because "the normal safety and supports have been effectively swept away" during the flood event.
"We know that domestic and family violence does increase after these disasters and we need to be prepared that if it happens again we have got these safety plans and pathways in place for people who might experience it after but also those experiencing it during the event," she said.
Housing crisis worsens
More than 3,000 homes across NSW flood-affected areas are now considered uninhabitable, and 1,200 people are in emergency accommodation in the Northern Rivers region.
Motorhomes have been set up as temporary accommodation as part of the NSW government's $285 million housing package intended to help 25,000 people.
Ms Knight Smith told The Drum she is worried about the clients who already identified as homeless and were waiting for private rentals to be available.
"We want people with domestic and family violence not to get lost in the sea of new people who are homeless," she said.
'They simply have nowhere to go'
A report from 2021 highlighted that even before the pandemic women and children were most likely to become homeless because of family violence.
Advocacy group Everybody's Home found prior to COVID more than 7,600 women across the country each year are returning to their perpetrators because of a lack of affordable housing.
While about 9,000 annually become homeless because they can't secure long-term housing.
Economist Angela Jackson who authored the report told The Drum that the women "are looking to leave but they simply have nowhere to go".
"We simply need to invest in social housing for these women," she said
The NSW Minister for Prevention of Domestic and Sexual Violence, Natalie Ward, told The Drum that Department of Communities and Justice staff had assisted at evacuation centres and Disaster Welfare Access Points.
In the statement she said staff were also tasked with "establishing plans for moving disaster-affected people on from Emergency Accommodation and evacuation centres into public and private housing".
The Drum airs weeknights on ABC and News Channel
