Many hands are still on deck at Dubbo’s Macquarie Region Headquarters of the State Emergency Service (SES) as floodwater from Queensland crosses the border and takes volunteers into their second straight month of service above and beyond the call of duty.
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The threat posed by flows from interstate, along with continuing support of communities still affected by December 2010 flooding in the region, is preventing local SES
volunteers from contemplating a trip north to help devastated Queenslanders.
“Unfortunately, we’re still pretty busy,” said Gavin Arnold, yesterday’s operations controller at the Bultje Street headquarters.
“We don’t have the resources to spare at this stage.”
The Macquarie region SES volunteers, and their kin from other parts of the state, have had their heads down since December 1, bar a couple of short breaks.
Mr Arnold said thousands of man-hours had been clocked up by “easily hundreds” of volunteers, some of who will be at the wheel for weeks to come.
“We’ll be going for quite some weeks,” Mr Arnold said.
“We fully expect to be going to at least the end of January.”
Currently about 30 volunteers are on the ground because of minor flooding in Wellington and Warren, and moderate flooding in Carinda.
Some properties in the Warren and Carinda districts remain isolated, with the SES prepared yesterday to respond to calls for more supplies.
At the same time, the local heroes are keeping a watch on New Angledool, Walgett and Lightning Ridge as murky water flows in from the Sunshine State that’s reeling from rain.
“We expect the floodwaters to impact the Narran River,” Mr Arnold said.
“It will flow into lakes west of Walgett and Lightning Ridge.
“We expect similar flooding to that of March 2010.”
Mr Arnold said New Angledool, east of Goodooga and just below the border, was already experiencing major flooding with the Narran River at 2.3 metres.
He said the river was expected to rise to 2.8 metres by January 20, but the SES did not anticipate that it would need to do more than keep the community supplied with necessities.
The Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting a Darling River peak of 12.3 metres and major flooding at Bourke on Thursday because of the Queensland inflows.
The Far West Region of the SES is warning that low-lying properties in the Bourke and Brewarrina districts may bear the brunt of the escaping floodwaters.
The Macquarie River in Dubbo was sitting at 2.98 metres at 10am yesterday morning, about twice its usual height, because Burrendong Dam was currently “spilling about 28,000 megalitres a day”, Mr Arnold said.
