An Indigenous community from Cabbage Tree Island in the New South Wales northern rivers region fears they have lost everything in the floods.
Residents from all 23 households were forced to flee as water inundated the island, which is off Ballina and has been an Indigenous reserve since 1893.
Dyonne Anderson, the principal of Cabbage Tree Island public school, feared her students won’t be able to return for months because of the flood damage.
“It’s gone totally over the school even though that’s on the highest part of the island,” Anderson said. “So we know that the water damage is extremely severe for the community.
“There are people that have just left with the clothes on their back. So they’re going to come back to a whole great deal of loss.”
People had been placed in accomodation until at least Monday, Anderson said. “But I think it’s going to be much longer longer than that [before they can return],” she said, noting the two bridges to get there may be damaged too.
The school, which counts 43 students from 3.5 years old up to 12, will probably need major repairs. “We may not return for many months,” Anderson said.
It comes as the government’s response to the flooding came under fire from Greens and Labor MPs.
Greens MP Tamara Smith was dismayed by the lack of coordination among government relief agencies, relying on a local armada of as many as 150 private boats to rescue stranded people and deliver supplies five days after rivers broke their banks.
“The anger is palpable,” said Greens MP Tamara Smith. “It’s like, what’s the use of governments if they can’t support people at these pointy moments?”
Evening conference calls with emergency services have left locals “absolutely frustrated”, Smith said. Concerns ranged from empty shops to a helicopter being used to deliver medicine to a single person because other needs weren’t known or catered for.
Ballina Shire has just 18 SES volunteers for 32,000 people. “Once you go out into the hills, you’re basically cut off, you’ve got nobody there,” Smith said.
Photograph: Dan Peled/Getty Images
Lismore, a flood-prone town that beat its previous record flood by two metres, is struggling to find homes for evacuees. About 800 people were temporarily located at the local campus of Southern Cross University, according to Labor MP Janelle Saffin.
The Greens have called for a permanent rapid response team to be set up to respond to disasters, a proposal Saffin supports in light of the difficulties she is seeing on the ground.
“We need rapid response,” she said. “And also if things can’t be done, we need to tell people and tell them why.”
During the height of the crisis, Saffin herself had to swim from the house she was staying at, while her husband barely survived. “There was no one to rescue him but ended up getting into a private boat just before he drowned.”
The big flood threat to Sydney and its surrounds in recent days has only complicated efforts.
Challenges for many people include obtaining food but also the fuel needed to secure essential supplies.
Both Ampol and BP blamed access problems rather than a supply shortage.
Flooding and road closures were making it difficult to reach retail outlets, both companies said, with a number of service stations forced to close.
Ampol shut five retail stores across the northern regions and north coast, including both stores in Lismore, adding a “number of our employees have been directly impacted”.
It said it was working directly with emergency services to maintain adequate supplies.
BP said it was “working closely with partners and local authorities to navigate the impacts of the weather”.
Ballina mayor Sharon Cadwallader said emergency services in her area had managed to secure an emergency fuel from one local service station but the some faced big difficulties.
The outlets that did have fuel were unable to use cards and the stations were out of cash.
“I’m not aware that we’ve had any fuel supply whatsoever,” she told the Guardian, adding that food was also running low including in evacuation centres.
“We managed to get a canoe to get some food supplies out of one of the charities that wasn’t affected - well it was affected, but a lot of product wasn’t. So that was good,” Cadwallader said.
The industry peak group, the Australasian Convenience and Petroleum Marketers Association, described the damage to outlets as “unprecedented” .
“There are service stations where the water is basically to the top of the canopy,” chief executive Mark McKenzie told the ABC.
“It’s going to be some time in those areas before we can get fuel flowing again.”
Guardian Australia contacted the NSW premier Dominic Perrottet’s office and Resilience NSW for a response
