NSW floods: Who’s to blame for Lismore flooding disaster

Inaccurate forecasting, faulty rain gauges and broken flood sirens - NSW’s flooding disaster was a perfect storm of stuff ups. So, who’s to blame?

Lismore residents were plunged into evacuation confusion on Tuesday night by a litany of errors including broken flood sirens, faulty gauges which were off by almost half a metre, and disastrously inaccurate weather forecasts, as a fresh deluge inundated the Mid North Coast just weeks after record breaking floods.

Premier Dominic Perrottet interrupted his parental leave for briefings following the failures – which saw residents told it was safe to go home at 5pm on Tuesday before fresh evacuation orders were issued in the early hours of the next morning.

Pictures: NSW lashed by more wild weather

VIEW GALLERY

The Daily Telegraph can reveal the Premier will hit the ground running in the region when he officially returns from leave on Monday, visiting flooded areas to hear from locals about what support they need.

Mr Perrottet on Wednesday spoke with Lismore MP Janelle Saffin, Mayor Steve Krieg, and Ballina MP Tamara Smith about the flooding failures.

As blame for confusion was being directed towards the State Emergency Service, authorities were desperately searching for 55-year-old Nowra aged care nurse Anita Brakel, missing in flood waters since late on Tuesday night.

Multiple failures on led to mass confusion about whether residents needed to evacuate on Tuesday, including wildly incorrect forecasting by the Bureau of Meteorology, broken warning systems, and faulty rain gauges.

The Bureau of Meteorology got its forecast badly wrong, saying extreme weather events are becoming more difficult to predict.

Flood evacuation sirens were broken, and rain gauges were out by 400mm.

NSW Acting Premier Paul Toole. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

NSW Minister for Flood Recovery Steph Cooke. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Acting Premier Paul Toole defended the failures by saying “no one could have predicted” the catastrophic weather. That’s despite the record breaking flooding which ravaged the same area just weeks ago.

“Unfortunately over the past 24 hours we’ve seen torrential rainfall that is continuing to land in the Northern Rivers area, and this has landed in an area that is already saturated from recent rainfall,” he said.

“This has been an extremely difficult time for these communities.”

Floodwaters in Lismore on Wednesday. Picture: Dan Peled/Getty Images

Flooding in Byron Bay on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Danielle Smith

SES Acting Commissioner Daniel Austin said it wouldn’t have mattered if rain gauges had been accurate, because they measured a different kind of risk than that which leads to evacuation orders.

“What we saw yesterday afternoon, in particular, was the river systems were starting to ease back and as I said this morning, the river systems actually eased further when the evacuation order had actually been lifted,” he said.

NSW SES Acting Commissioner Daniel Austin provides a flood and weather update. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Mr Austin said the agency’s infrastructure had been damaged by the recent disasters.

He said locals had been warned to be on alert and the broken evacuation siren was a measure of last-resort.

“The messaging has also been through the night and over the last few days to be aware of your surroundings … Emergency text messages were also issued during the night to do those communities,” he said.

“If we had a crystal ball, then you may make different decisions.

“The reality is you make the decision based on the information you have at the time and the information that we had at the time was that the rivers were falling and that the conditions we expected were no longer going to present.”

Rain gauges around Lismore were found to be off by almost half a metre when State Emergency Service personnel 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 show 0.4 metres remaining, even as the water commences flowing over the levee,” the post read.

Acting Commissioner Austin said a lot infrastructure was still damaged from the river.

“There are a number of those that are still out and still being repaired … What fell last night was not expected and certainly not to the intensity (we expected),” he said.

Byron and Ballina Shire residents are furious they were not given evacuation warnings and orders but Mr Austin said this was because they experience flash flooding which can be “unpredictable, fast and exceptionally hard to forecast and predict.”