As the residents of Eugowra begin to rebuild their lives after a deadly flash flood saw them clambering onto rooftops, they are also searching for answers as to how the scale of the disaster caught them by surprise.
In the early hours of a wet spring Monday morning, a small rural New South Wales community could not have imagined what was about to hit it.
Eugowra, nestled in the Lachlan Valley 300 kilometres west of Sydney, was almost wiped off the map by what has been described as a "tsunami", "waves" and a "wall of water".
The severity of the catastrophic flash flood on November 14 came with little warning to those who fled for their lives.
The official peak was in the vicinity of 11.2 metres — half a metre higher than the town's estimate for a one-in-5,000-year flood event.
Its biggest flood on record had been 10.01m in 1950.
Two people died in this year's disaster and a third of the township's population, about 150 people, were airlifted off their roofs.
Eighty per cent of homes and businesses were damaged.
Most people have to start again.
Eugowra is built on the banks of Mandagery Creek, which feeds into the larger Lachlan River that winds its way through NSW's central west.
The steep, windy and narrow creek weaves through hilly terrain to the town's centre, essentially splitting it in half.
Flood gauges upstream usually give the broader tight-knit district of 700 people around 10 to 12 hours of warning if water is making its way towards them.
On Monday November 14 they did not have the luxury of time or a warning on their side.
The day before there was a deluge around the region.
An average of 120 millimetres of rain fell across the catchment area and most people expected a bad flood.
Late on Sunday night the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) began issuing warnings for intense heavy rain and potentially life-threatening flash flooding across a large part of central NSW.
The BOM said Mandagery Creek would likely exceed the minor flood level of 8m overnight and the major flood level of 9m on Monday morning, with further rises possible.
3:30am
Local SES volunteers were awake after a night of little sleep in anticipation of a major flood.
They attempted to set off the town's flood siren to warn residents of the imminent threat. It did not work.
Next, they began waking residents on the flood-prone western side of town.
4am
Volunteers started driving through streets with their sirens blaring, warning people in low-lying areas to evacuate.
Then the community's fire alarm blasted.
4:30am: Local cafe owner Judd McKenna was up and sandbagging his shop, which sits just across from the creek.
"I think we've got ourselves a real one this time," he said in a video filmed at the time on his phone.
He was right. By that time the creek was just under 9m.
The western side of town was already under water and many people had moved to the eastern side — the side that doesn't usually flood.
5:15am:
The BOM cancels its warning for intense rainfall that may lead to dangerous and life-threatening flash flooding as the weather system eased.
6am:
The SES issues a text for low-lying areas to evacuate, warning that flash flooding is occurring and that water levels will continue to rise:
Flash flooding is occurring now in Eugowra, river levels continue to rise. People in low-lying areas need to evacuate immediately. Stay with family, friends or alternate accommodation away from flooding. Protect yourself and family. Listen to local radio, visit www.ses.nsw.gov.au or call 132 500.
The BOM revised its predicted flood height to a major level of 10.3m that afternoon and said further rises were possible.
Upstream, farmers were already in trouble.
The flooding was stretching into paddocks, sheds and homes that had never flooded before.
Fast-moving muddy water tore the creek banks apart, uprooting trees, dragging away anything in its path.
Water tanks, hay bales and livestock were swept downstream as the torrent made its way towards Eugowra.
These farmers were the first to be airlifted in an ominous sign of what was moving downstream.
Back in town, the warnings from locals who still had power or phone reception were coming in breathlessly.
"Someone told us, 'You've probably got half an hour. Get out, get out, get out. You've got half an hour' ... we did not have half an hour," Mr McKenna says.
Eugowra mum and Wiradjuri woman Casey Jones received the 6am text, but having lived in Eugowra all her life she said she was not concerned.
"I understood that was a normal flood warning, not for a wave."
9am:
CCTV footage from the local pub shows people walking along the main street looking at the flood.
Most were getting ready for work or their kids dressed for school.
Then the water started to rise, and quickly.
The pub's door gave way as water poured into the building.
Bottles, boxes and chairs floated through the bar.
Within 10 minutes, it had risen by more than a metre.
Out the front, the main street had become a river after a second surge of water hit.
Water up-ended tables and people clung to cars, poles and anything they could find to stop themselves being swept away.
Scores of people were running for their lives.
9:08am:
The BOM revised its warning again to say the creek might reach 10.5m in Eugowra later that afternoon.
Meanwhile, floodwaters crept up towards record levels hours before it was forecast to peak.
Judd McKenna began helping rescue the first of what he estimated to be up to 40 people.
"Everything was just happening so fast. It was a raging river that just swept across town."
Anchored by his sturdy frame, he waded through chest-high water to drag people to safety.
He also helped people out of their cars that had been swept away.
Along with many others, he made it onto the roof of a two-storey house.
After jumping back into the water to save several more people, he knew he didn't have the energy left to go back into the raging torrent.
He said he was thinking about his family, and more than once he thought about what they would do if he didn't make it.
"It scared me. I was scared, really scared.
"There were people everywhere, people sitting on the roofs of cars, people screaming."
9:30am:
Power and phones went down and the pub's CCTV cut out.
Whole houses were swept off their footings, coming to rest several blocks away.
Hundreds of people climbed onto their roofs — Casey Jones was one of them.
After getting her two-year-old daughter Kora ready for the day, she decided to go into town and look at the flood.
It's a local ritual to stand on the bridge and watch the western flood-prone side of town get slowly inundated.
She said her curiosity ultimately saved their lives.
They were driving when she saw a "wave" heading down her street, a street that had never flooded.
She fled to a neighbour's house, wading through floodwater with her child on her hip.
"We were inside but the first wave came into the house and hit us at knee height; the second wave was waist height.
"It was horrifying. I knew not to put [Kora] down even for a second."
The house at that point was inundated and they climbed onto a floating car before seeking refuge on the roof.
There they waited more than six hours to be airlifted.
Her terrifying story was replicated across the town.
It was not until days later that some people could contact family members to find out if they had survived or let them know they themselves were safe.
10:15am:
The first person is airlifted from town.
Twelve SES helicopters were deployed to make a total of 159 flood rescues.
"I was expecting, even then, there would be a lot of people that didn't make it," Mr McKenna said.
The bodies of two beloved residents who died were not found until days later.
Diane Smith, 60, was last known as driving in her car before the flood hit, while 85-year-old Ljubisa "Les" Vugec was in his home.
Eugowra's river gauge must be read manually and does not reach as high as the flood that swept through that day.
Locals have instead marked its peak on a tree with pink spray paint — approximately 11.2m.
Searching for answers
The burning question most locals have asked in the wake of the disaster is: Where did this extreme flash flood come from?
Generally, there has been heightened flood risks across the country due to the third consecutive La Niña event Australia is experiencing.
University of NSW hydrologist Ashish Sharma says this, along with climate change more generally, has exacerbated the long-lasting flood emergency in the NSW central west.
"Very wet soils, more intense rainfalls because of climate change, coupled with a La Niña, this is what is causing flooding."
But Professor Sharma said this alone did not cause the extreme flash flood at Eugowra — this was a different phenomenon.
One probable theory, he said, was that there was actually more rainfall than what had been detected in the official gauges the night before the flood.
"Rain gauge networks are by no means able to capture the widespread rainfall," he explained.
While the official gauges around Eugowra showed 120mm of rain in the catchment for November 13, many in the surrounding areas said there was much more that wasn't officially recorded.
"They had eight inches (203mm) at Lidster, the start of the Boree Creek that feeds into this creek," former shire councillor and Eugowra museum volunteer Ray Agustin said.
"There were seven inches (178mm) recorded at Manildra, six inches (152mm) at Cargo."
Professor Sharma does have another theory.
"Normally, you would have flooding moving downstream in a river, that is rainfall higher in a catchment that's coming downstream."
But in this instance, with the flash flooding caused by high-intensity rainfall in the hills around Eugowra on November 13, there could have been another influence at play.
"There is lateral influence, so flows coming not from the upper part of the catchment, but in catchment areas adjoining the river.
"There are two sources of inflow.
"Basically, these two sources would build on top of each other and build a higher flood wave."
Meantime, the community is split on whether surrounding crops may have slowed the floodwater or contributed to this "wave" by getting caught up in surrounding fences that eventually gave way due to the force of the water.
Professor Sharma said the latter made a lot of sense, if it was in fact true that more rain fell in the catchment than was recorded.
He also had one final explanation for what could have caused this "lagged flood", though more data would be needed to prove it.
"There are root networks that are interconnected and the roots are full of water.
"It pushes the water down and comes out many kilometres downstream.
"It's an unusual effect and might require more analysis."
There is one explanation that can be ruled out.
On the same day, Wyangala Dam to Eugowra's south-east was spilling into the Lachlan River at a record rate of 230,000 megalitres per day.
Mandagery Creek flows into the river but not until 18 kilometres downstream of the town.
It means the dam flows could not have contributed to Eugowra's flash flood.
None of these possible explanations are usual occurrences, though they go some way to explaining why there was little to no warning and why the water height came up so much faster than usual.
It is a situation Ray Agustin never thought his town would be in and never wants his town to be in again.
What warning Eugowra did have came two decades before when a flood management plan was drawn up for the township.
In 1999 the highest flood modelled was for an "extreme" one-in-5,000-year event at 11.26m.
A worst-case scenario, known as a probable maximum flood, has not been modelled for Eugowra.
In a 2010 revision of the plan, which is still in place today, the one-in-5,000-year estimate was revised to 10.7m, 0.5m below the recent deadly event.
Mr Agustin did not believe the predictions at the time.
"I spent 27 years saying this would never happen.
"Thank God council didn't listen to me and made people build to a one-in-100-year flood."
He has now turned his mind to how a better warning system could be implemented.
He rejoined the region's flood committee and said better upstream monitoring needed to be in place.
"We had no communications, we had no warning.
"We've had our Noah's ark flood ... but I'm not game enough to say this will never happen again."
The SES told the ABC in a statement that its response was based on data, local knowledge and predictions from the BOM.
It issued nine warnings but said flash flooding could change with little notice and be difficult to predict.
"The flash flooding at Eugowra was fast-moving resulting from significant rainfall over land and not entirely attributable to river rises," a spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the BOM said the agency "stands by the accuracy and timings of the forecasts and warnings" it issued across the Eugowra area.
They said predicting floods driven by intense localised rainfall was complex and "there remains uncertainty in the precise location of the intense rainfall".
The BOM confirmed the two automatic river gauges upstream of Eugowra — at Smithfield and Toogong — are used in flood modelling for Eugowra and were not impacted by the flash-flooding event.
WaterNSW, which owns both the gauges, said they were not designed nor intended for an instantaneous emergency-management role in the event of flash flooding.
Eugowra will rebuild
Mr Agustin said authorities must seriously consider allowing people to rebuild on higher, less-flood-prone ground.
Wiradjuri man Ally Coe said his ancestors moved through the area but knew not to settle on the flats.
"They would have known how dangerous the creek is," Mr Coe said.
"We often refer to them as environmentalists, able to read climate signals."
Some were known to camp in the surrounding sandhills, away from the flood plain on higher ground.
Wiradjuri woman Casey Jones said that knowledge should be used to build back more resiliently.
"I think they were onto something," she said.
Whether on higher ground or where the town is now, many Eugowra residents are determined to rebuild and stay in the area.
When Judd McKenna returned to his cafe, what was left was unsalvageable.
"It was all just destroyed in one moment, but I guess you put things into perspective when those sorts of things happen."
He plans to re-open his cafe within 12 months.
In the meantime, he has set up a coffee van that he managed to salvage from the floodwaters.
"We have so much love for this area, we'll work and work hard with the support of anyone who wants to help us.
"We're going to re-open the cafe, we're going to rebuild it."
Despite the optimism, it is clear driving through the streets of Eugowra, the clean-up will take months, maybe years.
Homes have been dislodged from their footings and floated several blocks away and will need to be demolished.
Ruined cars are strewn across paddocks along with people's waterlogged belongings.
Casey Jones is among hundreds who face the prospect of rebuilding their lives with no insurance.
"People don't have flood cover here because it doesn't flood here," she said.
"It'd be ridiculous to have tsunami cover, but that's what come through in two waves."
With her home destroyed, Ms Jones said she felt "lost" and did not know how to start again.
"We've still got houses on the streets that don't belong there, cars on the roadways — I just don't want to be forgotten."
Hers is one of 100 families who have applied for a caravan to temporarily live in until their home is deemed safe or rebuilt.
For now she and Kora will live with many others at the showground until the mobile homes can be moved onto their own front lawns once power and water are reconnected.
"The caravan, it's a nice change from the motel," Ms Jones said.
"It's going to be squishy but it's going to be comfortable."
Right now parts of Eugowra resemble more of a campground than its former self.
While it does mean people can return to the community, they are still not home.
"It's my safe place, even though it wasn't safe at the time. Over the years it's always been my safe place," Ms Jones said.
Credits
- Reporting: Xanthe Gregory and Jessica Clifford
- Photography & video: Xanthe Gregory and Jessica Clifford
- Producer: Lauren Pezet and Daniel Franklin
