The mayor of a region from which hundreds of residents are being evacuated due to major flooding has criticised the response time from authorities, saying lessons were not learnt from the previous flooding event in the region.
Emergency services have been working to evacuate about 700 residents from the remote communities of Kalkarindji, Daguragu, Pigeon Hole, and Palumpa to the nearest major centre of Katherine overnight.
They are set to be brought to Darwin today to stay in temporary accommodation.
Victoria Daly Region Mayor Brian Pedwell said families in flooded communities were being evacuated from their rooftops, and more could have been done to evacuate people earlier.
“At what point do you put people’s lives at risk?" he said.
"The response time is what families and community members are questioning."
Member for Gwoja Chansey Paech told ABC Radio yesterday evening that authorities were contending with "a very, very rapid increase in water levels".
"That has certainly gone beyond where the projections were," he said.
Mr Paech said a number of his impacted constituents in the region told him it was the highest water level they had ever seen.
"[It's] certainly something to stop and reflect on," he said.
"These are people who I have had the privilege to know for 20-plus years, and they've never seen the water at this level."
Gurindji community elder Rob Roy said the streets of Daguragu yesterday looked like they did during record flooding in 2001.
"It came up within 20 minutes, half an hour. When I went down there, it sort of looked like that there was a dam upstream that had burst. You get this fast, sort of, flowing flood that comes through and wipe[s] out the community – that's how it was," he said.
"Everybody was actually on top of their houses, on the roof. That's when we had two helicopters picking them up this morning, and it took them about hour and a half to get everybody across."
Flooding prompts calls for better infrastructure
Mr Pedwell said authorities had not learnt any lessons from the major flooding event in the Timber Creek region late last year, which saw residents forced to sleep on an outdoor basketball court for several days because of a lack of emergency facilities.
He said the community had been calling for better resources to deal with floods, such as river height gauges, and multi-purpose evacuation centres, but their requests had not been met.
“We’ve been lobbying [for] close to a decade now,” Mr Pedwell said.
He said he didn't feel that local decision makers had been listened to, which made the disaster worse.
“They’ve been living there all their lives, and they know the communities … but no one takes notice of them," he said.
Mr Paech said authorities were prepared to "work tirelessly to look after the people of the bush" in the coming weeks and months to help the region recover from the disaster.
Communities inundated with offers of assistance
Mr Paech said a number of impacted residents had lost all their possessions in the floods, but he had already been contacted by "so many people" offering to help.
"People have lost everything, and are going to need to start from scratch," he said.
"So any goods that can be donated, I just encourage people to donate them to your local member of Parliament's office, and we can organise with all members of parliament a coordinated response to [deliver] those donations to those areas."
Kalkarindji resident Jonno Brunton yesterday said he had been helping to drive Daguragu evacuees to the local school, which became a makeshift rallying point.
He said the community was banding together while they waited to be evacuated.
"All of the teachers, and a lot of people, have been contributing and driving vehicles to pick everyone up and sort of keeping things together at the moment," he said.
"There's a lot of good community spirit at the moment, some people making food and sharing it around as food has been bought in at the moment, and just getting ready to get out."
