An aerial operation is underway to protect a pump that supplies drinking water to almost 300 properties in South Australia, but some homes in the area have already been engulfed, after the main levee failed to hold back River Murray floodwaters.
The State Emergency Service (SES) said the secondary levee at Cowirra, near Mannum, had also been seriously eroded as the peak of the floodwaters approached mid-Murray towns a day sooner than expected.
SES chief officer Chris Beattie said divers had already been on site to bolster the structure, and that a helicopter was delivering 200 "super-sized" sandbags known as "bulka bags", each of which weighs up to 1 tonne.
"The secondary levee … has seen quite significant degradation," Mr Beattie said.
"The operations today are about shoring up that secondary levee, which is supporting the pump … [which] provides raw water to a water treatment plant … out of the flood plain and that services around 296 properties."
In addition to the inundation, a complicating factor for crews at the site was the presence of two brown snakes, which had to be removed by a professional snake catcher.
Pete Best from Adelaide Snake Catchers said he and a colleague were called in this morning close to where the SES was working.
"We were ferried out by boat out to the levee and we caught the first one, bagged it up and headed back," he said.
"When we got back we were walking up the hill back to the car when they were all screaming at us not to go because there was a second one.
"We walked back down to the hill to the boat, got on the boat again and got the second one, just as it was going back into that box and switchboard."
Mr Best said the floods had driven snakes from their homes, and the two in question were both eastern brown snakes.
"Once it's been seen a few times, I guess they decided that it was better to remove him and get him out of there and then they could just work freely," he said.
"[There were] probably 20-odd people there working in and around that levee bank, so there was an element of risk I suppose."
The SES said that, if the Cowirra pump were lost, water would need to be trucked in "potentially for up to six months to sustain fresh water, potable water, into those communities".
"It will take a day-and-a-half to get the rest of the bags installed and we'll see how they perform," Mr Beattie said.
Homes go under after main levee breached
For Cowirra resident Alex Nikolic, sandbagging came too late to save his home, which was submerged when the main levee was breached.
"We put everything at a certain height in the sheds and in the home to protect [things], not thinking the levee was going to break, so that means, now, basically what's left there — which is the bulk of our belongings — are probably underwater," he said.
"Personal belongings, tools, a classic car — it's all basically gone. There's probably not much left there at the moment but, as I said, we're not the only ones."
Mr Nikolic said he found out the levee had been breached via friends and social media, and expected to have to remain in temporary accommodation for up to a year.
"I'm quite angry, frustrated. We still haven't received any notifications," he said.
"They should have brought in Army Reserve or similar, to check all these levees."
However, Tony Costello from the SES said the sheer volume of work confronting crews was overwhelming.
"The main problem is we've got levee banks from the border down to the sea, basically. There's hundreds of kilometres of levee banks," he said.
"To be able to reinforce them and work on them at the last minute before a flood is not reasonable and practical.
"They need to be looked at as a preventative measure, where they need to look at them after this flood and anticipate what they might face in the future."
The chief officer said the Cowirra levee was not the only one to have sustained damage, with two roads near Murray Bridge flooded overnight when the Burdett levee breached.
"We've clearly seen well over a dozen levees catastrophically fail," Mr Beattie said.
"The vast majority of those have been agricultural levees."
