Residents of the flood-hit town of Lismore have once again been ordered to evacuate with the Bureau of Meteorology warning the town’s levee is likely to be breached by floodwaters on Wednesday morning.
In a flood warning issued at 5.05am, the bureau said major flooding was likely along the Wilsons River at Lismore, with floodwaters expected to peak at 10.6 metres around 8am, enough to overtop the town’s levee but still substantially below the 14.4-metre record set in February.
The NSW State Emergency Service issued an evacuation order for the Lismore CBD at 3am Wednesday, after earlier cancelling a similar order late on Tuesday afternoon as floodwaters failed to reach the level feared.
But relentless rain over Tuesday night saw the situation escalate. Nearby Alstonville had received 355mm of rain from 9am Tuesday to 6am Wednesday.
There were seven evacuation orders current in northern NSW early on Wednesday, including for low-lying areas of Bellingen, Macksville, Kyogle, Coraki and Tumbulgum.
On Tuesday evening, many Lismore residents had been hopeful of avoiding a major flood after the SES cancelled the CBD evacuation order, and others for Mullumbimby and Billinudgel, around 5pm.
Lismore roof tiler Leonard Gray spent Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning helping business owners move stock out of their CBD shops.
“Everyone panicked yesterday afternoon and we helped them move out, people weren’t taking any second chances because they’d cleaned things out and had started putting stuff back in,” he said. “No one wanted to go back to square one.”
Jan Praetz, who lives in the centre of Mullumbimby, could not sleep on Monday night as heavy rain lashed her roof.
“I was so paranoid … everyone’s on edge and … my anxiety level was off the scale with all that wind and rain and not knowing if it’s going to happen again,” she said.
When she received a note from the SES to evacuate, she heeded the warning straight away and headed to the RSL club. Once again, Mullumbimby’s RSL had become a place of refuge for weary, traumatised residents and their pets escaping rising flood waters.
Praetz said she was being cautious this time around because she was still “freaked out” from the last flooding event. She hadn’t seen a flood in the main street or had water in her house for 50 years, until four weeks ago.
“It certainly makes you question whether you should stay here or whether you should put your house up higher,” Praetz said. “I don’t feel safe and comfortable like I did.”
Others though chose to stay so they could try and protect their properties if water levels rose dramatically. Adam Guise spent the night in North Lismore.
“I had been here a month ago and survived 15 meters, I was going to stay again and see it out,” Guise said.
He spent yesterday moving animals to safety and making sure his leftover belongings were secured.
Guise has been living in his house and while it’s structurally sound, he only has two working power points and has been cooking meals off a camping stove. “It’s camping in your own house,” he said.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said Australian Defence Force and federal government resources had been deployed “as they always are” in response to the renewed flooding risk.
“Already ADF helicopters have been forward deployed to Ballina and surrounds to assist the SES with search and rescue capacity,” he said.
Defending criticism of the government’s initial sluggish defence response, Morrison said the ADF was “always” pre-positioned for floods and nobody could predict the “inland tsunami” that hit the state.
“We have seen the best of our community again in response to these terrible floods,” he said. “Too much support can never be enough in these circumstances.”
Businesses still continuing with cleanup were scrambling to prepare for the incoming rainwater.
South Lismore craft brewery Two Mates Brewing had just reopened a temporary tap house while rebuilding when another evacuation warning hit.
On Monday evening, the small business went on the backpedal, seeking a trailer to transport a forklift donated in the previous flood.
About $20,000 had been raised by a GoFundMe the two owners had established after the first flooding event for damages not covered by an “enormous” insurance premium.
Recreation centre Rollerworld in North Lismore had spent Monday evening packing up cleaning equipment and items that had been salvaged in the past floods.
“We’re going to be cleaning items we only just cleaned,” owner Craig Newby said.
In the most recent floods, water reached 6.5 metres in the low-lying building. “We had just cleaned all of the walls and were almost at the stage of rebuilding,” Newby said.
“Yesterday we packed everything up again … we just don’t want to break the levee again because premiums are so high we’re not ensured.”
Friends of Rollerworld’s had also established a GoFundMe for the club, which has been in operation in 1979.
“I’ve had people calling up saying they used to skate here 30 years ago,” Newby said.
Lismore psychologist Karen Potter said her community had been in a “post-traumatic state” for the past month and the recent flood warning had “amplified everything”.
“When people are still in survival mode and don’t have a home to live in or don’t have clothes,you can’t process deeper psychological emotions,” she said.
Potter said many of her clients still weren’t living in their homes or were in bare houses as this round of flood warnings hit northern NSW.
Potter’s own rooms were flooded out a month prior, and with power still uninstalled for many Lismore businesses, she had been providing sessions over Zoom and phone. But there was only so much she could do at this stage.
“When I first went into Lismore and went to see our rooms and went through the town it was overwhelming … the catastrophic devastation that’s happened,” she said.
“Clients I have … can’t leave their homes, they’re living without reception and it’s happening again. It’s too soon to talk when you’re thinking ‘I can’t sit down and have a conversation because I need to be prepared to evacuate’.
“This is going to take a lot of time. Nobody knows what’s going to happen to Lismore as a town. This is a place a lot of people have lived all their lives.”
There were 12 flood warnings in place across NSW on Tuesday morning including major flood warnings for the Tweed, Richmond and Wilsons rivers.
The wild weather conditions had also caused rough seas, expected to peak at between four and six metres on Thursday, with beach erosion possible.
About 4,600 personnel on the ground in NSW as part of the recovery effort were being diverted to the unfolding emergency.
At Mullumbimby RSL, Robbie Wood sat in a vinyl bucket chair with her ancient three-legged dog making calls.
Wood said the recovery centre had provided food and volunteers to help clear swathes of mud, but she had been lifted by the community’s spirit the most.
“They’re lovely people in Mullum. The young people here have given me back my faith in Australia,” she said.
Meanwhile, a second man died in flood waters in southern Queensland. His body was found by police in a swollen creek near Toowoomba.
The man in his 40s was swept away after getting out of his car when it became stuck in a torrent at North Branch about 6am on Monday, authorities said.
Queensland police said the man’s body was found in Spring Creek downstream from where he disappeared about 9am on Tuesday.
His death comes after a man and five dogs were killed after a ute was washed away at Kingsthorpe, northwest of Toowoomba, on Monday.
The band of heavy rain has now shifted from south-east Queensland but a number of flood warnings remain in place.
A major flood warning is current for Condamine River, west of Toowoomba, and a moderate flood warning remains for nearby Myall Creek at Dalby.
With Australian Associated Press
