South West SES deploy to flood hit NSW

SIX local SES members were part of a taskforce of 17 recently deployed to support flood and storm affected communities in NSW.

South West Region unit members from Winchelsea, Corio, Torquay and Geelong flew from Melbourne to Newcastle two weeks ago (July 6), before travelling to Gosford on the Central Coast to support and relieve local NSW SES crews.

Torquay Unit member Mark Heaysman was among the contingent who received a briefing later that day on the 40 outstanding tasks they needed to do over their four-day deployment in the area.

“We’ve got four strike teams, they’ve been allocated five to six jobs each, but any time something new gets called in it will be added to the list,” he said.

Access to some call outs was via damaged roads in remote areas, creating an “unpredictable environment” he said, but by Friday he and his colleagues had managed to clear the backlog of emergency requests for both Gosford and Wyong.

“There’s a lot of water around and pretty distressed locals.

They’ll say to you quite openly that this is the third time in 12 months, and they’ll say it with a degree of despair. The people we’ve spoken to say they’ve had minor flooding in the past, but nothing like this before.”

The majority of the jobs he and his crew attended were to make properties safe and where possible stop water coming in by replacing roof tiles or
laying sandbags.

“No matter what we’ve done, these people will have to go and do something afterwards. Some areas are still under water and once that water goes, people will have to deal with mould and the like.

His third deployment to flood-hit NSW, Mr Heaysman said the latest mission was remarkable for the way agencies have coordinated with each other.

“The way NSW SES, Fire and rescue and the Victorian SES are responding together so quickly is impressive – this deployment seems to have taken a big step in getting things done quickly.”