Lismore floods: TripADeal’s Norm Black kickstarts GoFundMe donation drive

The first outsider into South Lismore, TripADeal’s Norm Black, has opened a GoFundMe page with a $20,000 from his company. He’s urging others to add to his donation.

TripADeal co-founder Norm Black has kickstarted a crowd-funding drive to assist Northern Rivers residents with food and home essentials after he became the first outsider to enter “apocalyptic” South Lismore.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph as he assisted locals, Mr Black said he had established a GoFundMe donation page with $20,000 from TripADeal.

He urged Australians to rally in support of the Lismore community, saying any money donated would be converted into vouchers that residents could use to buy bottled water and other basics.

Houses and businesses in South Lismore have been decimated. Picture: Norm Black

Picture: Norm Black

“We think that’s the most effective way to get something in people’s hands,” he said.

“It’s apocalyptic,” Mr Black said. “This is beyond anything I can imagine.”

Mr Black, who lives in nearby Federal and has spent the past 25 years in the area, said he had taken a back way to enter South Lismore. The main access route was still cut, he said.

Standing on Casino St in South Lismore, he observed: “There is not a single thing that has been spared on this route.”

“The flood has ploughed through solid brick walls,” he said. “There are cars were flipped of their roofs.”

The storm water mark on a power pole was twice as high as the 1974 flood peak recorded on it, he said.

There was now a “race to get stuff out of houses before the sludge dries” and sets, he added.

A sludge-covered teddy inside a house on Casino St, South Lismore. Picture: Norm Black

TripADeal’s Norm Black (left) and Richard Johnston. Picture: Nigel Hallett

The scale of the clean-up and rebuilding required was mind-boggling.

He predicted it would be on a similar scale to that required after the 2010-11 Lockyer Valley floods in Queensland, which did more than $2 billion of damage.

Mr Black said there had been 660 millimetres of rain, including 200mm in one hour. But apart from some fence damage, he had been spared.

“I’ve got nothing to complain about,” Mr Black said.

TripADeal co-founder Richard Johnston was among the boat owners who had been rescuing people, Mr Black said.

To donate to Mr Black and TripADeal’s GoFundMe drive, visit gofund.me/2b317d0e