When a succession of flood disasters hit Forbes in the New South Wales central west, it was all hands on deck to protect its 8,000 residents.
Tens of thousands of sandbags were stacked around buildings, supplies were brought in to help residents weather the isolation and emergency services were dispatched for rescues.
But a decision to base the State Emergency Service's operations more than 30 kilometres away at Parkes has angered the Forbes mayor, Phyllis Miller.
"We're the centre of the disaster at that point in time," Councillor Miller said.
"It can't be over in Parkes.
"We believe that we should be operating all of our emergency services out of Forbes."
Access cut
Forbes is part of the SES Southern Zone which is based in Wagga Wagga and falls under the Lachlan Valley unit which is normally headquartered in Parkes.
During the major flooding in late 2022, the Newell Highway between Forbes and Parkes became submerged.
It rarely happens on that stretch of road and meant the two towns were temporarily isolated from each other.
Councillor Miller said even when the highway was open, time was wasted by travelling between Forbes and Parkes.
"We're losing two hours a day of travel time putting that silly base camp up there which is something you'd do in America, not in Australia."
The SES has defended its decision to base its operations in Parkes during the emergency.
"NSW SES had multiple divisions in the Lachlan Region when flooding was impacting a number of communities, with a division for the Forbes area established at the NSW SES Forbes Unit," a spokesperson said.
"This division led the local operational response with support from the incident management team at Parkes."
It said it had plans in place to move personnel and equipment around as required, taking into account road closures and isolated communities.
Local knowledge
Councillor Miller has also questioned the merit in bringing in SES staff from outside of the region to coordinate the response.
She said local people should have had a greater say in the decision making.
"We don't need people coming from Sydney and deciding what is best for our community," she said.
"The problems we experienced was we had that torrential rain and we were cut off from Parkes.
"We were stuck with that on our own.
"Forbes Shire Council stepped up to the plate and they worked tirelessly to get us prepared for that next flood."
The SES said the scale, duration and complexity of the flooding meant it had to bring in resources from elsewhere in the state to support operations at Forbes and relieve other staff.
"People from out of the area worked with locals using their specific local knowledge to complement our response across the Lachlan River catchment including Forbes," the spokesperson said.
"Local knowledge is imperative when managing flooding.
"The NSW SES always welcomes and encourages local volunteers to participate in incident management providing local leadership and guidance to their communities."
