How the Central West could look to the North Coast floods for help

Eugowra, Molong and Forbes have felt the full impact of devastating floods while Dubbo, Wellington, Warren, Bathurst, Cowra and Parkes are among the many other towns in the region to experience flooding in recent months.

Much of Eugowra was wiped out by what has been labelled an 'inland tsunami' while two people have lost their lives.

It's not too dissimilar to how the NSW's North Coast was flogged by flooding earlier this year, as the flood-prone city of Lismore was left devastated.

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In fact Lismore, located on the banks of the Wilsons River, is still suffering from the floods nine months on, with Lismore City News editor David Kirkpatrick saying some parts of the city feels like a "ghost town".

He said region's need to react differently to major disasters.

"We are, for whatever reason, dealing with disasters on a more regular basis," he said.

"Are we going to be a country that spends billions of dollars on cleaning-up and reconstructing? Or do we have to get smarter when it comes to disasters? Do we have to have different building codes?

"I think we have things in our building regulations for fires but not floods. Up in Queensland for example they have really good temporary levee walls that can be rolled out at a moment's notice. We don't seem to have them NSW.

"Do we have to mitigate differently? Do we have to build houses differently with different materials? Do we have to retrofit? Do we have to raise houses or move people out of houses?

"All those sort of questions are valid. If this is going to become more regular, we need to do disasters differently and better."

Mr Kirkpatrick and his team at the Lismore City News covered the North Coast floods extensively in February and March.

What he and his team witnessed will be similar to what many residents across the Central West will witness themselves in the coming weeks.

"The scenes of devastation and mass evacuations, emergency services being stretched," he said.

Mr Kirkpatrick believes communities are good at dealing with an initial disasters, but struggle in the medium to long term.

"I think what we're good at is dealing with that sharp end of an initial disaster, whether it be floods or fires," he said.

"I think the communities and emergency services have become quite use to that. I think we deal with it really well.

"We do the initial work of flood disasters; evacuations and warnings. I think we do the imminent clean-up after floods really well.

"I think it's the medium to long term that is probably the biggest problem, especially emerging on the North Coast. I know we weren't able to implement that broader recovery and reconstruction effort that well."

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