Experience has taught many residents in flood-prone areas around Lismore and northern New South Wales the value of leaving early
Valerie Thompson is heading home to Brunswick Heads in an hour. The 52-year-old lives in a low-lying area just north of Byron Bay and was among those who got out early before Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
The idea that the climate crisis may generate a cyclone that ploughs into south-east Queensland was already a “nightmare scenario” for the country’s insurance industry – the same companies that wanted to charge Thompson $30,000 a year to insure her home. If they were taking it seriously, why shouldn’t she?
Having tied down what she could and moved her family’s belongings to a higher floor, Thompson bundled her 18-year-old daughter, their pet guinea pig and a stock of supplies into the back of her bright red Suzuki Swift and drove north to stay with her sister.
Some might question the wisdom of driving north into the path of a tropical cyclone, but her sister’s place is built like a brick and concrete bunker, she says. Experience has taught Thompson, her neighbours and many others across the northern rivers region of New South Wales the value of leaving early.
“It wasn’t even until the 2017 flood that the State Emergency Service knew we were there,” Thompson says. “We had always had to rescue ourselves. That put us on their map.”
Her neighbourhood, tucked beneath the highway, had always flooded. But in 2022 the water swallowed her daughter’s bedroom, the highest room in the house.
The flood was traumatic. Like many people across the northern rivers, it taught Thompson and her neighbours a valuable lesson: don’t take chances.
Afterwards they formed a WhatsApp group to share information and coordinate. This time around, Thompson says, positive peer pressure from people sharing their decision-making and plans encouraged others who may have been more blase to take the disaster more seriously.
Safe in her sister’s bunker, she watched events unfold. Now she’s heading back, grateful to know everyone is safe.
Bec McNaught, from the South Golden Beach Community Resilience Team, says stories like Valerie’s are textbook across the region. People here have learned the hard way how formal and informal communications and community networks are “essential” before, during and after an event like Alfred.
McNaught’s group is part of a network of officially recognised resilience teams who have been sharing information with authorities and residents. The cyclone may not have hit as hard as feared, she says, but it was a good trial run. With many people now returning to their homes, these networks have proved reassuring, especially for those who carry the memory of the 2022 floods.
“It’s been a taxing week,” McNaught says. “It’s really been quite triggering for a lot of people. There’s lots of people who have only just finished repairs. One woman here that I spoke to literally just had the painters in last week, finishing off her house.”
With the immediate threat from Alfred beginning to fade, heavy rain continues to fall and the risk of flash flooding or falling trees remain. Thousands of people across the northern rivers are still without power, with telecommunications knocked out for many. Others have turned their phones off as they try to conserve battery life.
Evacuations orders for Lismore, the city that drowned in 2022, lifted on Sunday but residents have been told to expect power, water and communications to be shut off for the next three days.
In Alfred’s wake, ice is a valuable commodity. With the highway now open and power to some areas slowly being restored, the first supply runs made it into the region on Sunday morning.
Mandy Eddie, a woman in her 70s staying with her daughter’s family in Binna Burra in the Byron hinterland, says she was just getting ready to empty the fridge of “those things that didn’t make it” when five bags of ice landed on her doorstep.
“Ice is really important when you’ve had four days of no power,” she says.
Her two young grandsons are already climbing the walls but Eddie expects that, with only a couple hundred people in town, it will be days before the power company crews get her electricity back up.
What she wants, going forward, is some meaningful effort from governments to shore up electricity and telecommunications networks with renewables or other measures so they’re not cut off every time disaster strikes, and more effort to address the burning of fossil fuels and climate change.
“I really feel for Lismore,” she says. “One thing ends, another begins. This really feels like climate change. These events are a reality. If you’re not taking them seriously, you’ve got your head in the sand. What are politicians doing if they don’t see the reality?”