NSW flood blunders: Sirens broken, inaccessible evac centres
Frustrated Northern Rivers residents have been left with more questions than answers after a series of emergency service blunders left them exposed to floodwater.
Lismore
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Shattered residents have criticised emergency authorities over a string of shocking blunders that put lives at risk as floods engulfed the Northern Rivers for the second time in a month.
Only three weeks ago the town of Lismore was completely devastated by unprecedented flooding – but when the waters began to rise again overnight, sirens indicating the levee had overtopped did not sound due to a malfunction.
The NSW State Emergency Service did not send out social media messaging about the gravely urgent conditions until 40 minutes after the levee flooded.
In the middle of the night on Wednesday, residents in the Lismore CBD, parts of East Lismore and Girards Hill were also ordered to evacuate due to new predictions the levee would flood – less than 12 hours after they were assured it was entirely safe to return home.
Rain gauges around Lismore were found to be off by almost half a metre when State Emergency Service personal performed manual checks on Wednesday morning.
SES Lismore posted on social media there was a 400mm difference between the countdown display on the Browns Creek pump station and the actual water level.
“This means if the levee overtops, the display will be still showing 0.4 metres remaining, even as the water commences flowing over the levee,” the post read.
It came as police appealed for public assistance in the search for a woman missing in floodwaters as Lismore since at least 9.50pm on Tuesday.
Emergency crews began searching near Wyrallah Rd at Monaltrie, south of Lismore, after reports she was trapped in her car and in floodwaters.
Police spent several hours searching for the woman and her car but have still not found her despite recommencing the search in the early hours of Wednesday.
Police are calling on anyone who may have seen a 2017 white Holden Captiva station wagon, with NSW registration YHS 51F, in the greater Lismore area to contact police immediately.
Meanwhile in Ballina, residents never received evacuation orders – and those who wanted to leave voluntarily could not access evacuation centres due to already being flooded in.
Residents in both Byron Bay and Ballina instead woke up to discover water lapping at their doors – if it was not already inside their homes.
It has left Lismore locals like Adam Mazzarella scratching his head as to how predictions could have been so wrong as emergency services scrambled.
“It was very confusing,” he said.
“I’m not here to shoot people in the foot or anything but why say we are expecting a major flood and lift (the evacuation order) in the CBD to entice people to come back in?
“Then they tell everyone to get out, it doesn’t make sense.”
Mr Mazzarella, who works at Beaurepaires on Uralba St, said decisions made by emergency services have life and death consequences.
“I know for a fact a mate of mine, his old man is in Kyogle St and he is still in the house, I know that for a fact,” he said.
“I’ve alerted the police about that, but you make the decision to stay and this is it, this is what happens.”
He described the response to the first flood as a “s*** fight”.
â—ï¸ LISMORE LEVEE OVERTOPPING IS IMMINENT â—ï¸ THE SIRENS WILL NOT SOUND DUE TO MALFUNCTION. EVERYONE MUST GET OUT OF THE CBD IMMEDIATELY.
— NSW SES (@NSWSES) March 29, 2022
Nearby on Diadem St, Greg Matheson was barely holding onto a flimsy umbrella in the rain as wind lashed Marie Mackney Courts near Ballina Rd.
He has lost faith in the emergency services predictions and said most people will now make decisions for themselves.
“Now you have to be more reliant on your own analysis,” he said.
“They acted early and rescinded their earlier analysis and then reinstated it at two or three in the morning.”
Mr Matheson has lived in Lismore for four years and was just out of reach of the catastrophic floods one month ago.
He was on alert to evacuate but after the army and SES made trips to his home to inform him of impending evacuation orders, he chose to stay anyway.
“I don’t know the cause of the bad predictions but there have been plenty of bad predictions in this one,” he said.
Acting Premier Paul Toole said “no one could have predicted” the catastrophic conditions battering Lismore, Byron Bay and Ballina as the NSW SES admitted to repeatedly bungling the flood emergency management.
Other residents have described the Bureau of Meteorology’s predictions ahead of the floods as “totally off” as they pick up the pieces from another major flooding disaster.
The Wilson River at Lismore is expected to peak at 12 metres on Wednesday night, 24 hours after the Bureau predicted it would stay below major flood levels.
Amanda McGrath grew up in Lismore and has been in contact with friends from Coraki, Nimbin and Federal who all questioned the decision to allow people to return to Lismore CBD before a massive deluge flooded the river.
She was confused as to why the SES allowed people to return to parts of Lismore while massive storms were circling the town in the evening.
“I think people are losing faith in them, particularly the Bureau,” she said.
“The information from the Bureau was totally off. I would have thought they would use more caution this time and get everybody out.”
Mrs McGrath worries that kind of mistake could be the difference between life and death and believes they were lucky the whole town was already out.
“What about people who might not have time to get out?” she said.
Imogen Wolf has lived in Lismore since 2000 and can see why people would be frustrated but doesn’t know if emergency services and weather forecasters deserve to be lambasted.
“I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one making those calls,” she said.
“I thought during the last flood it was surprising to me that there was no warning it would be two metres higher than ever before but they are humans doing their best in those jobs.”
Her friend Rodney Scott who lost his Keen St business ‘Earth Oven Woodfire Pizza’ last month feels like the town has been “kicked while it’s down”.
However, he doesn’t lay too much blame at the feet of the emergency services.
“I have enough faith in them,” he said.
Some residents decided to stay in Lismore despite major flood warnings and evacuation orders.
Police are still searching for a woman who is missing in floodwaters south of Lismore in Monaltrie.
The Bureau’s predictions came under the microscope after the catastrophic natural disaster one month ago and residents feel like they have made the same mistakes again.
Ballina locals are also puzzled by the emergency response having not received any evacuation order despite roads being cut off and inundated on Wednesday.
Some residents are now in buses on the way to Brisbane because evacuation centres in Northern NSW are unavailable.
Byron Bay received no major flood or severe weather warnings prior to rainfall in excess of 250mm which is inundating their CBD.
The SES have claimed texts were sent to warn Byron Bay and Ballina residents of worsening conditions as 90-300mm of rain saturated the region – but many say they never received anything and instead woke up surrounded by water.
By that point, it was too late for residents to flee for official evacuation centres in Lennox Head and Evans Head because the Pacific Hwy was closed off due to flooding.
“We’ve been saying for a number of days the community needed to stay across the weather conditions and across their surroundings to understand what their conditions were and what their risks were,” Mr Toole said.
“We will continue to ask that of the community.”
SES Acting Commissioner Daniel Austin also doggedly defended the agency’s decisions after predictions of moderate flooding at the Wilson River on Tuesday afternoon were replaced with hurried warnings less than 12 hours later the levee would soon be overtopped.
Ultimately 40 rescues were conducted overnight as floods hit quickly once more.
“Yesterday afternoon, based on the conditions that we saw, we did release the evacuation order for Lismore based on the local consultation that we undertook and also the advice on the weather conditions,” he said.
“That advice was the right advice to enable the community to try to restore and work through its recovery process.
“As we then saw some hours later, we then saw a significant thunderstorm form over the Lismore area that led to the extreme flash flooding event.”
Mr Austin said they had made the decision based on a belief the rivers were falling and insisted emergency texts were issued in a timely matter when the situation evolved.
“If we had a crystal ball we may make different decisions,” Mr Austin said.
Mr Austin also defended inaccurate rain monitors and malfunctioning SES sirens, saying the agency’s infrastructure had been damaged by the recent disasters.
“We know there are a number of pieces of infrastructure across the entirety of the Northern Rivers that are still damaged, be they roads, be they gauges, be they bridges,” he said.
“There are a number of those that are still out and that are still being repaired – all of us as a community are working as quickly as we can to restore all those pieces of infrastructure to enable this to work.”
Mr Austin also echoed Mr Toole’s call for the community to take responsibility for “unpredictable” flash flooding, saying it was “exceptionally hard to forecast”.
“We have been warning for a number of days, there was a chance of a weather systems in that area creating flash flooding and creating riverine flooding,” Mr Austin said.
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Dean Narramore said it had been a “stressful and devastating” night for residents in the Northern Rivers region.
“Last night we had a small but intense low pressure system that rapidly developed just off the coast of the Northern Rivers and that developed an area of intense thunderstorms around the Evans Head area late last night and that continued to expand and move northwards and westwards,” he said.
“We saw widespread communities from Evans Head up to Byron Bay, experiencing 200 to 300mm in just a few hours and unfortunately, that caused significant and destructive flash flooding.”
The inconsistency is now causing scepticism and frustration among locals, with Repentance Creek resident Zane van den Berg saying some Bureau of Meteorology technology has been “wiped out” by floods.
His property is near the floodwater station and he believes the equipment is contributing to inaccurate readings of river and catchment levels.
“The flood recorder got ripped out of the bank,” Mr van den Berg said.
“I don‘t believe BoM is reading accurately, the chart claims a peak of 4.5m at 6am this morning, which just isn’t true,” he said.
Ballina has copped the brunt of the deluge with almosty a metre of rain falling in the past weekm 282mm of which had been received in the 24 hours to 3pm Wednesday.
Alstonville had received 431mm, Tuckmobil 352mm, Bellingen 335mm, Tuckurimba 330mm
Dorrigo (Mountain Top) 320mm, and Byron Bay 282mm in 24 hours.
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