Courage Under Water: Trauma of historic NSW floods lives on

When the flood rose and swallowed whole NSW towns it wasn’t just water residents and rescuers had to contend with. There were far worse things lurking in the raging torrent. WATCH COURAGE UNDER WATER HERE.

• Episode 1: Horrifying NSW flood stories told for first time

It was the spiders that Coraki Fire and Rescue acting captain Russell O’Keefe hated the most during the floods.

“They go for high ground,” he told The Daily Telegraph for the second episode of flood documentary Courage Under Water.

As the Richmond and Wilsons rivers rose O’Keefe stood neck deep in water directing rescue boats while the spiders climbed up his face and on to his head.

“The fire station is a high point in town,” O’Keefe said. “This small island, approximately 150-200 metres wide, was home to 350 people and 250 animals.”

For six days the Fire Station was an island in a brown sea of contaminated water.

Lismore’s residents became the faces of the flood tragedy. Picture: AAP Image/Jason O'Brien

“People walking into the floodwater would quite often go in barefoot, cut themselves and then wind up with pretty bad infections,” he said.

On the third day a doctor was flown in by helicopter to treat them.

The small community of Coraki is just one of many struggling to rebuild after the devastating floods that were the fourth worst natural disaster in the world last year.

More than 500 people remain in emergency accommodation and hundreds more are stuck in limbo paying mortgages on uninhabitable homes while they wait to see if they will qualify for the government buyback scheme.

This was the scene that greeted the crew aboard an Australian Army helicopter on March 3, 2022. Picture: Bradley Richardson

Courage Under Water spoke to dozens of rescuers and flood survivors and found more than a year on the tears of shared trauma are never far from the surface.

“People are still traumatised, definitely,” O’Keefe said. “There is a large number of the community that just get extremely anxious when it rains. I know for the first few months people would get extremely upset just from hearing the sound of even soft rain on the roof.”

But he has no doubt the community will rebuild. “There‘s definitely a bond among a lot of the community from living so closely going through the same event. You know, a lot of shared loss,” he said.

“The community as a whole seems to be a lot stronger for what has happened.”

Premier Dominic Perrottet with Lismore Mayor Steve Krieg as they inspect the impact of floods that hit the region in 2022.

That is a sentiment shared across the Northern Rivers with Lismore Mayor Steve Krieg, who had only been in the job for a couple of months when the floodwaters rose, determined to rebuild back better.

“I don‘t believe the CBD should be looking at relocating. I think the CBD should be embraced and encouraged to grow,” he said. “Because we can protect the central business district.”

He said the new improvements would take years to implement but would ultimately mean floodwaters would never again mean the “tinny army” of residents would have to turn out and rescue 4000 people from their rooftops.

“I never ever want to witness and experience what we did 12 months ago with all of those people just desperate to be saved,” Mr Krieg said.

Originally published as Courage Under Water: Trauma of historic NSW floods lives on