I’ve lived near Lismore for 15 years. During the town’s first floods, I took cupcakes to an evacuation centre and asked if they accepted homemade goods.
The answer: “We don’t, put them there, they’ll be great for morning tea.”
The official line was no, then came a wink and nod because all highways were cut and food was scare. It reminded me of the SES call early on 28 February for private boat owners to help rescue those stranded in inundated properties. Within an hour it was cancelled, but hundreds of tinnie owners were already on their way.
The community’s response to the floods could be described as a DIY model of emergency management. Maybe it began with the “mud army”, who clean buildings in flood-prone towns.
Australians have a history of volunteering as natural disaster responders – look at the Country Fire Authority and the Rural Fire Service. Perhaps it comes from the colonial mindset of taming a seemingly wild land, but as we Europeans have settled into and dominated the environment, volunteering has declined.
In Lismore the prime minister said: “In any natural disaster, everyone has a role to play ... there will be a community response in disasters such as this because the community is already there.” Yet a consequence of the emergency response to these floods is that many have lost faith in the state’s ability to protect them, even with large numbers of emergency personnel now on the ground.
On Tuesday Anastacia Gunn and Carol Evans were at Lismore’s Wilson River checking the gauge, counting down metres until levee breach and looking at the water. They did this several times in the day because they didn’t want to “just rely” on the Bureau of Meteorology. Carol’s house was inundated in February. She had only a couple of hours to evacuate.
The SES lifted the Lismore CBD evacuation order at 4.30pm on Tuesday, only to reintroduce it nine hours later. Many question whether meteorological and hydrological forecasting models are effective in extreme weather events. There’s a feeling that climate change has moved the goal posts but scientists, emergency workers and the government haven’t caught up. “Things aren’t happening in a way that they’re familiar to anymore,” said Aiden Ricketts, who, in his tinnie, rescued 18 people.
There was an emotional exchange between a local journalist and Scott Morrison during the PM’s visit, with the journo yelling: “Australians couldn’t get through on triple zero, mate.” I was surprised a regional journalist had these expectations in a crisis. My attitude is shaped by the Black Summer bushfires. On 8 November, when a record 17 fires in New South Wales were at the emergency warning level, I was briefly trapped by a fallen tree before the RFS cleared the path. I listened as units called for backup to save towns and I spoke to residents fighting to save their homes.
My place hasn’t been destroyed by floods. The roof leaked after 430mm of rain fell in one night. My daughter is in year 12. Her school is destroyed. I have friends who are homeless. Some are OK, some aren’t.
I’m not that interested in questions around the PM’s decision not to declare a national emergency after the levee was first breached. It feels like a debate about whether the Titanic’s deckchairs were in the right spot. The bigger climate change questions engage me, ie should Australia have a jobkeeper payment for people whose jobs are lost in disasters, or land swaps for people left homeless, or a state insurance for high-risk properties, or an ADF special climate response branch? And what form will new volunteer organisations take – the paramilitary model of the RFS or community controlled?
Lismore resident and incoming Greens state upper house member Sue Higginson has called on the government to acknowledge it is failing to keep the community safe: “We need to understand that our systems are not able right now in their current form to navigate what we’re facing.”
She described Lismore residents as “pioneers” on a new climate change landscape. As climate change pioneers, communities it seems will be called on to respond to disasters that overwhelm emergency services – much like the 19th-century pioneers who established the CFA/RFS.
The Koori Mail has set up a Lismore recovery hub – that started with a marquee with a box of vegetables, and is coordinated by Dunghutti and Nyangbal-Arakwal woman Naomi Moran. It offers groceries and hot food, and has a doctor on-site. Russell Scott, who runs a stall there, watched the volunteers ahead of Wednesday’s flood.
“Within six hours, this place was emptied thanks to the support of the volunteers, thanks basically to the angels who just arrived,” he said. “It was amazing to see it all packed up. There was no fighting, no squabbling, everybody just worked together and did everything for the good of the people.”
• Christine Tondorf is a freelance journalist from the north coast of New South Wales
