Further rain to worsen NSW flood emergency

Australia Broadcast Center

21-05-2025

Andy Park: A massive dump of rain in the Manning River on the New South Wales mid north coast has created a major flood emergency with dozens of residents trapped in their homes, businesses inundated and farmland swallowed up by the rising waters. Those living around Taree are worst affected but with further heavy falls expected, emergency workers are bracing for worse to come. Nick Grimm reports.
Nick Grimm: Heavy rain keeps on falling and there's nowhere for it to go. When a break in the deluge does come, Taree locals like Fred are getting out to survey the damage.
Fred the Butcher: It's just devastating, it really is. You can hear a lot of cattle mooing away. I think there is some high ground further up. So yeah, it's one of the worst floods we have ever witnessed here at Taree. So as you can see, there's a really, really nice land cruiser underwater there and a few tractors.
Nick Grimm: And at nearby Glenthorne, residents like Jordan Halloran can do little but watch the rising waters as they remain stranded in their homes.
Jordan Halloran: The main concern is our two year old son who is here with us and two dogs but even more of a priority is our neighbour's house which is about to be inundated with water. I'll just show you but we're awaiting a rescue and we've been waiting since about 1am. They said the only way to get us out at the moment is with a chopper and there aren't any.
Nick Grimm: Emergency workers have carried out more than 150 rescues in the past 24 hours. This morning dozens more reported to be stuck on roofs or anywhere they can stay out of the water. A six week old baby, part of a family of six, rescued by Jason Harvey from the NSW Volunteer Rescue Association.
Jason Harvey: They thought they could ride it out and obviously floodwaters did rise quite significantly from the Manning River. They did have a veranda on the second story and the water was significantly up so we were able to just get them into the boat.
Nick Grimm: Complicating the effort, the fast moving waters and debris making it too dangerous to conduct rescue operations at night.
Fred the Butcher: Oh there's somebody's fridge.
Nick Grimm: Jason Harvey again.
Jason Harvey: You've obviously got household goods, you've got things like logs, trees, fridges, seen plenty of fridges. Went for a paddle last night to a property and had to paddle past a number of fridges. That makes it quite dangerous for rescue operators.
Nick Grimm: Flood levels on the Manning River are now in excess of the old record set almost a century ago in 1929.
Nicky Thornton: My parents are on the river and they've never seen it come up near their house and they were moving furniture at three o'clock in the morning so that's never, never happened.
Nick Grimm: NikkyThornton owns an insurance broking firm in Taree. She spent yesterday sandbagging her business only to watch her riverside office flood in the early hours of this morning.
Nicky Thornton: We're a small town. Everyone's affected. All the other businesses who are our clients as well are friends and there's stock that's been damaged. People thought they'd probably moved it high enough. We went off the last flood. So there's going to be a big clean up and yeah it's just a bit disheartening to keep going through this again and again.
Nick Grimm: And the worst isn't over yet. The Bureau of Meteorology Senior Forecaster Dean Narramore says still more rain is on its way for another two days at least.
Dean Narramore: Yeah look huge numbers. If you look at, we saw widespread one to two hundred millimetres yesterday. Those same places have seen another one to two hundred millimetres since nine o'clock yesterday to today. So we're looking at two day totals in many areas of two, three, four hundred millimetres. Some locations even up to five hundred millimetres in the last forty eight hours. And that's what's leading to this widespread flash and riverine flooding. And unfortunately we probably still have another one hundred to two hundred millimetres to come in the next twenty four to forty eight hours in that same area from around Taree all the way up through around the Coffs Harbour area with isolated falls up to two hundred and fifty to three hundred millimetres possible.
James McRae: Oh what a night. We had another 70 mil rain overnight on top of 200 yesterday which was already on top of saturated soil. So we're seeing a huge amount of runoff. Rivers are all broken banks and yeah just just devastating results really. Sort of drowned pastures, cows with sore feet.
Nick Grimm: That's James McRae a dairy farmer at Barrington on the Manning River's upper catchment area. And while he expects a tough 18 months ahead recovering from flood damage, it'll be even worse for his fellow primary producers further downstream in low-lying areas.
James McRae: Further down the catchment it's another story. It's complete devastation down there. We're hearing from some dairies that have lost calves already. They've got half a metre of water over their whole farm already. Yeah all these waters that's running off the upper part of the catchment here is just these funnelling down to that Manning and it's just it's just horrific what's happening.
Nick Grimm: Mid North Coast Mayor Claire Pontin is calling for additional assistance for her area with a massive recovery operation needed once the immediate emergency has passed.
Claire Pontin: We're still in the process of rescuing people and dealing with the flood but next week that water will be down and we will just have an enormous clean-up to do and we'll have an awful lot of people who can't move back into their houses.
Andy Park: New South Wales Mid North Coast Council Mayor Claire Pontin ending that report from Nick Grimm and Stephanie Smail.