Support for NSW flood victims

Australia Broadcast Center

26-05-2025

Andy Park: The Prime Minister has announced further flood support for the mid north coast of NSW, including deploying defence personnel to help with the clean up. Over the next few days, getting food and water into communities cut off by floods will be a major priority. But the Weather Bureau is also warning that more wet weather could hamper the clean up effort. Bridget Fitzgerald reports.
Bridget Fitzgearald: For the second time in four years, Josh Hack has watched his friends and neighbours do their best to manage a devastating flood.
Josh Hack: They'll say they're OK, but they're all broken and they need their help.
Bridget Fitzgearald: The Taree farmer and agronomist says the scale of the flood caught many by surprise.
Josh Hack: We're all planning for the flood. We're all planning for, you know, the worst case scenario, 2021, you know, one in 100 year flood, surely we're not going to get two in four years. So, you know, we planned for that. You know, there's farmers that have done things with infrastructure and stuff since then to try and help plan for that. But unfortunately, this was unplannable.
Bridget Fitzgearald: He's counting his losses, but says he's been lucky.
Josh Hack: It's pretty tough for everybody. And I've been very lucky. Like, I get most of my animals. Yes, I've lost some, you know, and some of the ones that I lost are the ones that were probably in the best spot, but they, for whatever reason, decided to go for a swim, to try to go to a different spot.
Bridget Fitzgerald: In Kempsey, 300 kilometres north of Sydney, restocking critical supplies has been a slow process.
Greg Steele: We just can't get food into them.
Bridget Fitzgearald: Greg Steele is the Kempsey SES unit commander.
Greg Steele: Normally, the resupply wouldn't be quite so difficult. However, we've had a power failure in the CBD, which has obviously spoiled a lot of the a lot of the foods that require refrigeration.
Bridget Fitzgearald: He says work's being done to make sure shops can safely store the supplies. Supermarkets in flood hit towns like Kempsey and Wingham were shut over the weekend, with road closures causing supply delays. Janelle Saffin is the New South Wales recovery minister and minister for the North Coast.
Janelle Saffin: About 12,000 people still remain isolated. So whilst we're going into recovery, there's still a response happening with the SES. There were flood rescues over the last 24 hours. There were 11, 532 calls. So we've got the two things happening at once.
Bridget Fitzgearald: And flood affected communities are set for another wet night. Senior meteorologist Dean Narramore from the Weather Bureau says the rain is more likely to be a frustration rather than a threat.
Dean Narramore: We're only expecting that 10 to 20 millimetres, maybe isolated, 30 to 40 millimetres at most. It's going to move through very quickly, not the hundreds of millimetres that we have seen.
Bridget Fitzgearald: He says strong and gusty winds could cause some property damage and hamper the clean up. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says 70 Defence Force personnel will be deployed to the New South Wales Mid North Coast region.
Anthony Albanese: They will be involved in clean up, in debris removal, in welfare checks and re-establishing critical infrastructure that is so important for these communities.
Bridget Fitzgearald: Anthony Albanese says people in Kempsey, Port Macquarie, Mid Coast and Dungog are eligible for the disaster recovery allowance, which can provide up to 13 weeks of income support. So far, more than 500 properties have been declared uninhabitable. But there are fears thousands more have been seriously damaged or destroyed.
Andy Park: That report from Bridget Fitzgerald and Alison Xiao.