26-05-2025
'A war zone': Desperate for help, flood-hit residents say army deployment 'isn't enough'
Sharyn Andrews standing where her back porch used to be. Her home is now surrounded by a dense wall of flood debris, which she says she needs urgent assistance to remove. Source: SBS News / Alexandra Jones Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to visit flood-ravaged communities in Taree, but residents say the promised government assistance falls far short of what's needed to confront the scale of the disaster. For over a century, the Andrews family have lived in a house on farmland in Taree on the NSW mid-north coast. Now, it's the scene of unimaginable destruction. A densely packed wall of debris — several metres high — surrounds the back of the home. Trees, tangled metal, broken fences, farm equipment, and power lines are wrapped around all the structures in the area — washed up by raging floodwaters that ripped through the area last week.
Ian Andrews has lived in the family home for over 80 years and said they're in desperate need of assistance to clear the debris. 'It's heartbreaking', he said, choking back tears. "You can see the amount of debris we've got to remove, and we need to get it done quickly," he said. "We need trucks. There's 20, 30, 40 truckloads [of debris] there."
Ian's wife, Sharyn Andrews, says it's been difficult — physically and emotionally — to begin the clean-up while grappling with the reality that a lifetime of memories have been washed away. "It's just devastating. It's stuff that we can't fix," she said. "We are only pensioners, so it makes it very hard money-wise." "We don't know whether we'll be able to come back and live in this house because the water's got so high."
Sharyn said other than friends and family, they've been offered no assistance. "We haven't had anyone here other than my family. We've had no help from anybody." "The longer they leave it, the worse it is. The mud smells," Sharyn said. 'People can't do it, it's got to be machinery. People can't move this."
"They will be involved in clean-up, in debris removal, in welfare checks and re-establishing critical infrastructure," Albanese said. They will be joined by 100 disaster relief workers by the end of the week. Ian and Sharyn's grandson, Josef Proctor, said he'd like to see more boots on the ground. "Any help is good, but would I say it's good enough? No. No way," he said. "This is like a war zone. A disaster, just catastrophic."
"There hasn't been much government assistance in the area. Not at the moment anyway," he said. Josef lives on the same street as his grandparents and is also one of the thousands now displaced by the disaster. "I'm a single dad of three kids and their rooms are gone. Clothes gone. It's been pretty extreme." "If I didn't have my mum, we would have nowhere to go,' Proctor said. "I'm going to have to move away." He said he can't quite believe what he's seeing. 'Whole buildings in sections, like whole chicken coops... just scattered."
Shattered by the news of his hometown's suffering, ex-rugby league player Matt Adamson travelled on Monday from Queensland to help with the clean-up. "I grabbed some rakes and some boxes of gum boots and stuff because a lot of farmers were saying they needed that sort of general assistance just to get through,' Adamson said. "I get pretty emotional, because as a young kid growing up in this area, it was a beautiful place to grow up.
Through the heartache, Sharyn said she's grateful for the helping hands. "The people that are helping, like Matty, he's come from Queensland because his parents live here in town, and we've known him from when he was a little kid," Sharyn said. After seeing the scale of the damage, Adamson also thinks much more assistance is needed. "Has the prime minister been here yet? Has he turned up?" he said. "This is a big moment to come and help local people who pay their taxes and are struggling to survive, especially our farmers," Adamson said. Millions of dollars in disaster relief payments are now available to residents and businesses in 19 council areas. Ian Andrews hopes he'll be eligible. "This is a lower-income [area], like a lot of pensioners, a lot of older people in the Taree area, and I know there's a lot of them that have been caught in the flood. They're probably just as bad off as I am," Andrews said.
Sharyn said the water last week rose nearly a metre above the last devastating floods in 2021. Her late mother-in-law also kept records of previous flood events. "She said the 1929 was the worst flood. And this flood was bigger than 1929. "She always kept a journal and had all the all the heights recorded. And I have continued that since we've lived here," she said.
"Terrible to lose a lot of sentimental stuff, but we have our memories. "And that's what I say to the kids. You know, the kids are upset, and I said, "You know, we've just got our memories."
