Molong community rallies as one to clean-up following record-breaking floods in November, 2022

Almost 90mm of rain fell across parts of Orange and the surrounding region in the 24 hours to 9am, November 14 and Molong felt the brunt of that deluge.

A 40-foot shipping container was seen sailing down the Mitchell Highway through the middle of the night as the Molong CBD copped its worst flood in living memory. That shipping container moved from the rural centre and ended up down near the pool, some 500 metres away. According to many business owners Monday's flood was much worse than the 2005 disaster.

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Shop fronts were smashed and the inside of many stores completely gutted as the flood water peaked in the middle of the night. Cars were picked up and moved by the sheer strength of the water, while some shops had massive lumps of wood land in their stores.

"The whole main street is devastated. It almost looks like bomb went off. There's glass everywhere," Linda Dunsire said.

She opened her Summer House Store business six weeks ago and being higher up Bank Street was untouched by the floods.

However, Ms Dunsire was in the thick of it, alongside hundreds of others in the main street of Molong, assisting with the clean-up.

"To see the community spirit in this town, we've only been here two years, this happened this time last year and we're just trying to get out any stock we can and get it in a safe zone," she said.

"It's really devastating for everyone."

Molong Stores' owner Robbie Carroll was left devastated by the floods. He said residents raced into town in the middle of the night to help save some of his stock only to be caught in the floodwater and forced to wait inside the building until about 4.30am, when the waters began to recede.

He said the water rose rapidly, and when they eventually went down the full scale of the damage was heart-breaking.

"It was like a war zone (on Monday morning). Devastating," he added.

Many Molong business owners were understandably too distraught to comment but they would have been overwhelmed by the show of support from the community.

Masses of people formed production lines to help remove stock from shops, while heavy machinery worked to clear out the larger items that had washed up Bank Street and landed in unusual places.

Cabonne mayor Kevin Beatty, a Molong resident too, was shattered to witness the devastation.

"It was a devastating morning this morning with the entire CBD going under and residences flooded," he said.

"You can see the response, the community has all rallied together and come forward to assist devastated and effected people."

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