No phone, no NBN: Flood victims slam telecommunications failures

Furious flood victims are demanding to know why telecommunications networks failed them in their hour of need, when some literally resorted to sending messages in bottles.

Families trapped by rising floodwaters in the recent NSW floods were forced into desperate measures, even calling New Zealand for help, because they could not get through to Triple-0.

As survivors consider getting CB radios and in some cases are still using messages in bottles to communicate, questions are being asked as to why the network failed so dismally.

Help is finally arriving for flood-hit areas, but people could not call for it when the waters rose.

After the Black Summer bushfires left many communities without phone or internet, Telstra was given tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to crisis-proof telecommunications infrastructure in ­regional and rural Australia.

But inthe recent flood crisis, many communities — where survivors are now considering leaving altogether and starting again despite millions in flood recovery funding — were again left stranded without phone and internet for as long as a week.

Lismore Mayor Steve Krieg said communications had been a complete failure in the crisis.

“In the evacuation centre one family told me they were saved because they rang family in New Zealand and got them to ring Triple-0 here to get help,” he said.

Ballina Mayor Sharon Cadwaller said the loss of communications plunged the entire town into blackness.

“It hampered rescue operations, and without communications it was hopeless,” she said.

Supplies were dropped to isolated communities on Saturday.

Ms Cadwaller said it was “staggering” that mobile hot spots took so long to be brought in to help.

“If they can get these services put in for a festival, why not a disaster area?” she said.

Following the Black Summer fires, which found almost 900 outage incidents of four hours or more across fixed-line, mobile and fixed wireless networks, the federal government spent $37.1 million “to prevent, mitigate and manage network outages in natural disasters” through the Strengthening Telecommunications Against Natural Disasters (STAND) package.

The package included $18 million for telecommunications providers like Telstra, which already receives more than $200 million per annum as part of its universal service obligation, to deploy upgraded back-up power, emergency power solutions for rapid service restoration, and other network hardening measures.

None of that helped northern NSW when both Telstra and the NBN went down.

Emma Scott was cut off without communications for a week.

One furious flood victim’s response to a Telstra message.

A spokesman for the NBN said cuts to services were caused by widespread power outages as a ­result of severe flooding.

A Telstra spokesman said: “The severe weather and flooding that hit southeast Queensland and northern NSW was like nothing these communities have experienced before, cutting power, access and a utilities to a number of communities for weeks.

“Many of our network sites have backup generators or batteries that can keep services online for a period when power is cut, but many areas were inaccessible or without power for several days, even weeks.”

Telstra said it was using money from the STAND program to upgrade battery back-up to 12 hours at 341 base stations nationally.

It had brought in temporary mobile facilities to the area but had “the same limitations of requiring power and access to an area in order to be deployed and we carefully and constantly assess where and when they may help”.

The waters engulfed much of Lismore.

But Emma Scott, a Telstra customer, is considering buying a CB radio after being cut off in the tiny town of Tyalgum in the Tweed shire with no phone, no internet, no EFTPOS, and a cash-only economy as a result.

The mother of two said the general store had to open ­accounts for locals just so they could buy food, because EFTPOS was down.

“It was quite stressful, we had no idea what was happening and ­people could not contact us,” she said.

A fridge floats down a Lismore street at the height of the crisis.

“It’s made us think … do we need long-range radio and do we know where our most vulnerable people are in our community.

“We heard the Telstra exchange was flooded, but it’s 2022, surely there are strategies in place for this sort of thing.”

In nearby Mullumbimby, Jacquie Lewis felt she had been transported back to carrier pigeon times as she tried to get information from those stuck or needing help so she and her band of volunteers could rescue those in need.

“It was havoc, apocalyptic, trying to figure out who to rescue. Literally we had to send someone and wait for six hours till they came back,” she said.

“People were putting notes in plastic bottles on the other side of landslides and throwing them across to get communications — and this is 2022.

“You could not call Triple-0, you could not call the SES, you were stranded until a civilian came to find you.

“Phones and internet, the whole thing went down. And no one received any evacuation orders because no one had any reception.

“I’m horrified. I can’t understand in a First World country, 45 minutes from the Gold Coast, to have such a lack of connection in a crisis. I feel like we were back in the fires.

“This was supposed to be resolved, there was supposed investment into NBN and Telstra to ensure there was a crisis management system that would click into place in a state of disaster and that didn’t happen.

“How much was invested and why did it not prevail?

“The lives put at risk due to the lack of communication was horrific.”

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