Flood-hit resident demands answers from NSW Premier after Eugowra goes underwater
A frustrated resident of flood-ravaged Eugowra has told the NSW Premier he’s had a ‘gutful’ of the state’s flood response in a fiery moment caught on camera.
Environment
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An angry Eugowra resident has confronted NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet over the state‘s emergency response to the flood disaster.
Mr Perrottet has been visiting flood-hit communities in the Central West after record-breaking river rises inundated the small town – forcing one in five residents to be rescued by volunteers.
Eugowra resident Peter Jones sidled up to the Premier as he addressed a pack of reporters and demanded answers over the state’s latest flood crisis.
“We had no food, no clothing, no one telling them what was going to happen next because no one was here.
“What's going to happen up here now?” Mr Jones asked.
“All these people have been taken to Orange, they haven’t got a house to go to.
“What’s your answer to some of them before I keep going?”
Perrottet responded, saying “whatever we can do to make sure that is fixed, we’ll do that”.
Mr Jones said his 80-year-old brother has cancer and had felt abandoned since floods hit the town on Monday morning.
“He walked out of this town yesterday with someone else’s clothes on, there was no-one here to help him,” he said.
The Eugowra resident accused the Premier of refusing to learn from the mistakes of previous flood disasters, as locals struggled to make contact with emergency services when the “wall of water” first hit.
“It’s repeating the same thing, and you bring up the same answers,” he said.
“It’s taken us five days to get bl**dy nowhere.
“We’ve had enough floods in this country now.”
Mr Jones even went so far as to demand a personal meeting with the Premier if he makes it back in to office after the March election.
“If you’re back in parliament next year, I want a personal date with you either in your office or in my house,” he said.
“I’ve had a gutful.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he’d “had engagement” with Mr Perrottet, in which the NSW Premier thanked him for support and shared photos from Forbes.
“My heart goes out to the victims of these floods,” he said from Thailand.
“Premier Perrottet sent me a photo, some of you (media) may have been with us in Forbes, we visited a farm, a family farm, they were lovely welcoming people.
“Dominic sent me a photo of that farm this morning.
“It is under water, all around it. It was an aerial photograph, I assume, taken by a drone. It’s devastating.
“And my heart goes out to that family but also to others as well.”
The town of 700 people was devastated when floodwaters ripped through businesses and homes early on Monday.
There are currently 109 flood warnings in place across the state.
Authorities are still searching for 85-year-old Ljubisa ‘Les’ Vugec who was last seen at a home in Evelyn Street, Eugowra, about 9am on Monday.
Originally published as Flood-hit resident demands answers from NSW Premier after Eugowra goes underwater
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