Families mourn five swept to their deaths

THREE families were yesterday struggling to come to terms with the loss of five loved ones, swept to their deaths on Friday at the height of the NSW storms.

THREE families were yesterday struggling to come to terms with the loss of five loved ones, swept to their deaths on Friday at the height of the NSW storms.

The Holt and Bragg families converged on the Bragg family home in the NSW central coast town of Bateau Bay, not far from the homes of those who died, Adam Holt, Roslyn Bragg, their two girls, Madison and Jasmine, and nephew, Travis Bragg.

Mr Holt's sister Fiona struggled to find the words to describe their emotions.

"We have all three families here. It's a massive loss for all of us. What can I say? It's not fair, it's not fair at all," she said.

The five were killed at about 4pm on Friday, during the peak of the wild weather, when a section of the Old Pacific Highway collapsed, sending their car crashing down an embankment where it was struck by a wall of water and swept into Piles Creek.

The devastation, which left a 10m-wide, 30m-deep fissure in the road at Somersby, left the mangled wreck of their silver Ford Falcon about 100m from the road.

Ms Holt thanked those from the NSW police and State Emergency Service involved in the two-day operation to recover the bodies.

"All three families would like to thank everyone, including the police, the SES and volunteers who helped in the search for our family," Ms Holt said in a statement. "We also appreciate the huge number of messages received from the public in support of all our families."

Paul Diamond, a local area health service officer working as a spokesman for the families, said they were deeply distressed but doing what they could to support each other. "Everyone is just grief-stricken, as you can imagine," Mr Diamond said.

"They were an ordinary hard-working family, their families are terrifically close and loving ... It's not every day that you lose so many members in one family. It's just terrible," he said.

The bodies of the five have been taken to Newcastle morgue for formal identification.

The bodies of Mr Holt, 30, and his long-term partner, Ms Bragg, 29, were recovered from Piles Creek yesterday, while the bodies of their two daughters, aged two and three, and their nine-year-old nephew were recovered on Saturday.

The car was empty of its occupants, their bodies recovered only after emergency services determinedly battled through a search of a 4km stretch of the creek.

More than 40 personnel, including divers guided by a police helicopter, laboured among heavy rain, winds and floodwaters during the search.

Police said it appeared the parents may have attempted to rescue the children, whose infant restraints were found undone in the back of the car. A child's booster seat, and children's clothing, lay beside the wreckage of the car, which came to rest upstream of where its occupants were eventually recovered.

One of the few witnesses, a tow-truck driver identified only as Mark, said three people had tried to pull the father from the car before it was swept away.

Mr Holt, a mechanic in Somersby, was believed to have been driving the family to their home in Berkeley Vale when the road collapsed.

NSW police have established a number of crime scenes and are working to investigate the causes of the tragedy for the Coroner.

NSW Premier Morris Iemma said he understood maintenance of the road to be a federal, not state, responsibility, contradicting a claim by local federal member and Roads Minister Jim Lloyd on Saturday that the road was a matter for the state.