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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, This is 7am.

Almost two weeks on from the catastrophic flooding on the East Coast of Australia, residents have begun the slow process of rebuilding their lives.

But they’ve been left with the lingering question: as the floodwaters rose and communities tried to save themselves - where was the help?

Today, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper Rick Morton on the dramatic rescues conducted by ordinary people… and why they were necessary in the first place.

It’s Wednesday, March 16.

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RUBY:

Rick It's now been a couple of weeks since large parts of Queensland and New South Wales began to flood, and you've been talking to some people who live in the northern rivers who who really lost a lot during that time. So can you tell me about what they've been saying to you about what it was like when this all began?

RICK:

It was almost unbelievable because the scale of this catastrophe was so sweeping in terms of the record breaking nature of it, but also the size of the area affected.

And I spent last week just constantly on the phone talking to people from all of these different areas about what had unfolded.

Archival tape -- Rick:

“Well, let's start at the beginning and just give me a brief rundown of what happened to you personally and then we’ll get to the bigger stuff”

Archival tape -- Kiri:

“Umm so I was staying at my ex-partner’s place in Mullumbimby, we have a four year old daughter”

RICK:

and I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing.

Archival tape -- Kiri:

“by the time the water came into the house. We were shocked by it. Yeah. All of us were like, Oh man, it's in the house…”

RICK:

And I think to start off with you will focus on Kiri Hance because she lived in Ballina at the time, but she was at her ex-partner's house in Mullumbimby, which is a small community, it's in the Byron Shire.

Archival tape -- Kiri:

“We had been watching the water for maybe a couple of hours going, no, we're fine, we're fine, and then we're like, Whoa. And it's yeah, all of a sudden.”

RICK:

Nobody thought that this would happen in this way. Nobody thought that their houses would go under. Certainly, Kiri Hance and her ex-partner Nick didn't think that would happen because it had never happened before.

Archival tape -- Kiri:

“When the water came in we were like “we gotta go” - let's go to the pub, and we had to get all the kids on surfboards, paddle them down the street, wading down the street, everyone’s on canoes and carrying whatever they have on their head…”

RICK:

And that's kind of, I guess the turning point for this is so many people when they hit that point and they realised that this was going to be something completely unprecedented that they'd never seen before. And that's a terrifying moment for all of the people that I spoke to.

RUBY:

Hmm. OK. And so as the floodwaters began to rise, then Rick and people like Krri who were watching this happen in front of them. What did they do to try and get to safety?

RICK:

Whatever they could.

I was speaking to Michael Woods, who's an exercise physiologist in Lismore. His own business went under, and by the time they realised how bad things were, he went out with hundreds of others in, as he said, You know, teenagers in boats and on kayaks, and they were just doing circuits, going house by house, getting people from roofs from their flooded hallways.

It was really interesting because he kind of made a picture of how high this water was. The water was so close to the powerlines that some of the power boats could actually go under. And so he was in there with his kayak scooting under the powerlines because that was all that could get into some of these houses. And that was actually a benefit in a weird way because there was no engine noise. And so he was saying that sometimes he could hear people yelling for help because there was no engine noise.

And at one house, Michael Woods came across this elderly gentleman and he was standing on a chair, in a hallway, with floodwaters around his chest, and he was on the phone to his son, who lived elsewhere. And he was he was saying goodbye in case he didn't make it out.

And Michael Woods said, been privy to that conversation as he waited for a boat to come back and hearing the son talking to his father and telling him how much he loved him. It was really quite something else.

RUBY:

And you can only imagine how terrifying that would be. I think, you know, it's it's a nightmare scenario being in your home with water rising and not knowing if you're going to actually be able to get out and some people didn't get out. We know that things did get very bad. And despite the best efforts of people like Michael, some people did die.

RICK:

Yeah, yeah, people. I mean, they found the body of an elderly woman stuck in her home. They were really close escapes. I mean, elsewhere, it was reported that authorities found a woman floating on a mattress about 20 centimetres below the ceiling of her house, and the floodwaters were rising. So she was running out of room.
And, you know, as we're speaking, there have been eight flood related deaths in New South Wales and those countless close calls.

I heard one particularly terrifying story from an obstacle racer and local business owner Lisa Parkes, and she's got incredible mountain climbing, rock climbing, rope skills. And she was like, I could be helping with the cleanup but she thought that her skills would be most put to use by trekking into some of these isolated valleys. Because there are so many towns. And little villages and tiny settlements up in the mountains.

And so that's what she thought she'd do. So she went with his team originally, she said to me she works, providing services under the National Disability Insurance Scheme and one of the people she works with who's disabled lives up in that area. And Lisa was like, I need to go check on them. And her client was fine, and then she was talking to other people and they were saying, You know, we think we've got everyone accounted for. But she wasn't quite sure.

Archival tape -- Lisa:

“And I could see a house and I could see a landslide up quite high and I was like, so, I’ve got my rope access gear, so we’re gonna go up here ‘cause I can hear a baby crying…”

RICK:

She could see a house up on the hill, like way up on the hill and there was a landslide and her instinct said they needed to go check just to see what was happening.

And she told me she could see a baby lying on top of the mud about 30 metres, 50 metres away from a man and a woman who she she presumed were the mum and dad and they were buried almost neck deep in the mud.

Archival tape -- Lisa:

“So they couldn’t use their arms and their legs and their baby was lying in front of them in the mud and apparently they’d been there for over 24 hours”

RUBY:

Oh my God.

RICK:

Yeah, they'd been there for more than 24 hours. They couldn't move. They couldn't hold their baby. And just as she got there, this is just incredible. Just as she got there, the baby tried to roll over and caught mud in its airways and it went unconscious.

Archival tape -- Lisa:

“So when I got the baby it went unconscious ‘cause it caught mud in its mouth and so I had to clear its airwaves and resuscitate that baby on the side of a landslide hanging on rope … which I did…”

RUBY:

Mmm.

RICK:

So Lisa's there on top of a landslide tied to a tree by ropes, and she's resuscitating this baby. And it worked.
I'm told they're all fine, at least physically anyhow. I mean, of course, the winds are going to take a lot longer across the whole region. The psychological stuff.

And I think this is where the anger comes into it, because the thing that I heard over and over and over again from every single person I talked to and these are people who are unconnected to each other. They're from different walks of life with different interests. They kept saying, Where was the help?

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RUBY:

Rick, you’ve been telling me about people like Lisa and Michael, who were out there quite literally saving lives during the floods. But I think we expect in Australia, when a natural disaster hits, that there will be official help - from emergency services, from defence. So where were they?

RICK:

It's a very good question.

The Australian Defence Force did have, I think, two at the time, helicopters doing rescues when the conditions allowed it in the immediate aftermath or during the worst of the flooding.

The problem is this is a long term rescue and people were wondering Why haven't we had this massive mobilisation of machinery trucks, men and women, people who can come and help right now?

This is one of the worst natural disasters in Australian history. This is on par with Cyclone Tracy and the devastation.

But the problem is there was a trickle. And so yes, there were some boots on the ground and there were some local defence personnel, but nothing like what was required.

And the communities were left almost entirely to their own devices, having to save each other from drowning, having to watch their loved ones suffer. And in some cases die, having to do that really disgusting, awful, dangerous work and there was a conspicuous absence in that first week.

RUBY:

Mm-Hmm. And Rick, what about leadership at a time like this? We know that the prime minister, at least at the beginning of this disaster, had Covid. But, you know, he was still working as the prime minister. So can you tell me a bit about where he was and what he was doing? And and I suppose. I guess how where where he wasn't what he was doing?

RICK:

Who knows? He didn't declare a national emergency under the new Commonwealth legislation that they explicitly passed after the Black Summer bushfires because they felt like they couldn't act fast enough because at the time, the old legislative regime required that they be asked to act by the states and territories.

So this new legislation was designed to give them an excuse for a reason to intervene in a crisis.

They didn't do that until Wednesday last week, and it was the day that Scott Morrison got out of isolation and was able to go to Lismore and announce that declaration.

RUBY:

Right, and Rick I imagine that the weeks and the months ahead are going to be extremely tough. What is the scale of the clean-up that everyone is facing right now?

RICK:

Yeah, I mean, in the Lismore area, in Northern Rivers area alone, I think the last thing I had was more than 2000 homes are uninhabitable. Businesses went under. I mean, this infrastructure will take months, if not years, in some cases, to rebuild. There was already a housing crisis in the northern rivers, and now there are 2000 homes uninhabitable, some of which may be condemned permanently.

We're talking extraordinarily high levels of flooding and at a level we've never seen before. And I know for a fact that people who were affected by the Black Summer bushfires more than two years ago now who are still in the process of rebuilding more than two years later. So that's what we're talking about.

RUBY:

And that goes, I think, to this bigger point, which is that we are seeing rolling disasters, bushfires one year, a couple of years later, floods like this and we know that these events are no longer going to be unusual. They're going to become more and more common. And I suppose to that end, I mean, can you talk at all about what might be needed in order to kind of live in in the reality of that?

RICK:

Here's the thing there's only so much we can do.

So in terms of flood mitigation, you can do some things and all of them have pros and cons. Almost all of them have consequences.

The only action that really counts for anything is preventing the planet from warming more than it already has, because for every one degree of global warming in the atmosphere, the atmosphere can hold seven per cent more water. Now, in this event, I'm speaking to a flood engineer. In this event, it seemed like there was even more than that. And so what we're talking about here was an already incredibly rare weather event that was turbocharged by climate change. He was saying that the the maximum probable height for flooding in Lismore is 16 metres, according to the Bible used by flood engineers in New South Wales. This flood was fourteen point four metres. Like, they called the 16 metres a Noah's Ark event like the Noah event, so we're talking literally biblical type things here.

RUBY:

Mm-Hmm. And Rick, the people who you've been on the phone to for the past week or so, how are they feeling now? Because I think what we tend to see when we have natural disasters like this in Australia is a lot of stoicism, a lot of communities banding together. But the scale of this and coming at the end of an incredibly difficult few years for so many people must really be taking its toll. And so, I mean, how are they all feeling? What are they saying to you about the future and and their emotions about that?

RICK:

It's really interesting because I've been thinking about this since I had the chat to these people. And I, you know, I'm from country Australia and I know this type of character and I know how easily we lean on this stereotype in Australia, which is that, of course, this community is resilient.

I mean, these people are amazing; but there seems to be this theme that we rely on resilience as a reason to not provide the support from institutions and governments. But at the same time, it's a beautiful thing to see how these communities come together.

Archival tape -- Kiri:

“The gratitude and love for your community and people and humans grows so immensely”

RICK:

They are all the stars of this show.

Archival tape -- Michael:

“If it wasn't for the hundreds of locals in their boats, the extra hundreds in their tinnies, the extra hundreds in kayaks, there would have been a massive death toll”

Archival tape -- Andy:

“You know in places like Lismore and Mullimbimby the death toll count would have been in the hundreds if people were going in there and their private boats, jet skis and flags and stand up paddleboards if you take off it, literally picking people off their houses and risking their lives”

RICK:

But of course, these communities are completely heartbroken.

I mean, they are traumatised that trauma will take a while to eke out

Archival tape -- Keith:

“Community response, amazing. You know? Yeah, that's very heartening to see. But yeah, people have really just felt abandoned”

Archival tape -- Kiri:

“There was no sirens, or no professionals around to give us and advice you know - surely someone is gonna tell us what to do here - because we don’t know what to do.”

RICK:

And they feel like they've been left to fight for their own lives, on their own, and to remake their towns from scratch. And to kind of disabuse them of that notion, more help, more support needs to go into these communities right now because otherwise will be proven right that they that they were indeed abandoned.

RUBY:

Hmm. Rick, thank you so much for talking to me about all of this.

RICK:

Thanks. Maybe it's some pretty harrowing stuff.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

The federal court has ruled that the Federal environment minister, Sussan Ley does not have a duty of care to protect young people from climate change when considering fossil fuel projects.

The ruling on Tuesday overturned a previous decision in favour of a group of teenagers who brought a class action case against the Commonwealth.

The young climate activists have not ruled out further court action.

**
And, the average Australian worker was roughly 800 dollars worse off in 2021 according to new analysis done by the Australian Council of Trade Union.

Due to increases in the cost of living, including property and fuel prices and slow wage growth, the ACTU president Michele O’Neil says the average worker effectively received a pay cut last year.

O’Neil said that employees in healthcare and social support saw their real pay shrink even more than the average worker, losing almost a thousand dollars last year.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am, see you tomorrow.