Herculean post-flood clean-up under way in NSW

Flood-affected residents face a herculean clean-up effort as floodwaters recede around Sydney, but more than 60,000 people remain under evacuation orders or warnings.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet meets flood-affected locals in Camden. Picture: Seb Haggett / NCA NewsWire

Flood-affected residents face a herculean clean-up effort as floodwaters recede around Sydney, but more than 60,000 people remain under evacuation orders or warnings, with emergency services concerned for dozens of communities in the central coast, the Hunter Region and the mid-north coast.

Warnings are also in place for parts of the state’s west as flood peaks travel downstream, farther inland.

As of Thursday evening, 2700 Ausgrid customers were without power in parts of the central coast, Lake Macquarie and parts of Sydney, the company said.

Premier Dominic Perrottet announced a multi-agency taskforce with more than 500 personnel, helicopters and equipment was being deployed to drive the flood clean-up across Greater Sydney and the Illawarra.

The taskforce includes personnel from the NSW State Emergency Service, the Rural Fire Service, the Environment Protection Agency and the Australian Defence Force.

“Our emergency service personnel and volunteers are doing an outstanding job dealing with the flooding but it is also vital we get boots on the ground to begin the recovery process,” Mr Perrottet said.

“In the last 24 hours, we have had 50 flood rescues across the state,” he said on Thursday morning. “We have had over 1000 requests for assistance.”

NSW Emergency Services Minister Steph Cooke said the government was now beginning to change to a recovery footing, but urged continuing caution.

“I am asking people please be vigilant as you return home,” Ms Cooke said. “We want to avoid any tragedy on top of the heartache we have already experienced over the past week.”

Emergency services were particularly concerned that residents using heaters to dry out their homes would pose a fire risk.

Residents of Dubbo have been warned to boil their water after the city’s water treatment plant was affected by floods.

The Bureau of Meteorology on Thursday morning suspended its severe weather warning for NSW. Rainfall has been easing, with the weather system starting to move off the NSW coast and into the Tasman Sea.

The SES overnight issued evacuation orders for areas on Tuncurry and Bulahdelah, on the mid-north coast of the state.

The BOM has moderate to major flooding warnings in place around the NSW central coast, Tuggerah Lake, along the Wollombi Brook and the Lower Hunter River. It also has flood warnings in place along the Darling River in western NSW, including a warning of a possible major flood in Tilpa.

Until recently, the centre of the crisis was in regions near the Hawkesbury River in Sydney’s northwest and suburbs southwest of the city on the Nepean River.

“Despite easing conditions, further rainfall is expected and flood warnings remain in place for many areas,” the BOM said.

Ms Cooke announced that natural disaster declarations had been made for six more NSW local government areas, in ­addition to 23 made on Tuesday.

The new LGAs are Bayside, Dungog, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Singleton and Upper Lachlan. The declaration will unlock access to more federal and state support to residents in those areas. Disaster payments of $1000 per adult and $400 for each child affected by flooding in those LGAs became available on Thursday.

There have been 6853 claims related to storms and flooding in NSW since July according to the Insurance Council of Australia, 2493 more than the number on Wednesday.