Cabonne flood disaster, one year on: Residents say we're 'no better prepared'

Physically and mentally picking up the many pieces left behind in its wake, many impacted business owners and residents across the region share similar views.

Fears surround lacking plans for the next natural disaster; and the one they're still recovering from on a daily basis.

From two of the hardest flood-hit towns in the Cabonne Shire, the Central Western Daily queried a dozen people, sprawled across both Eugowra and Molong.

I don't think you can ever be prepared for an event like that, not with what happened on that night, and I can completely agree with people who are saying another flood like that would be their breaking point.

The last one really broke me. It's only for the family support I had that got me through.

I don't know if I could do everything again, again ... trying to pick up all of the pieces yet another time and put it all back together.

I'm more mentally prepared, but all that extra energy to start all over again with two businesses, that's a whole other story.

No, no we're not prepared for it at all.

We're still dealing with the last [flood] in pod homes and just trying to get it back to how it used to be, so we wouldn't be ready for another one.

I don't think we're any better prepared or in a different position than we were 12 months ago, and I think it would be a catastrophe if it happened again.

The longer in between each event, people get more prepared in a sense, or forget about things; but if it happened again ... very soon again, I don't think we would be prepared at all.

I guess you would have to be a bit better prepared, but I'm not sure.

There's still probably going to be the same mistakes, but I think you'd have to be better prepared in some way, wouldn't you?

I don't actually think so, but I think that individually, some people are.

A lot of people have aged a lot over it as well, because I live in Cudal and we got flooded at home, too.

There are people there who I don't think will ever be the same, so it's not a good time.

We would be better prepared with the accommodation side of things, I think, but how do you prepare for something like that?

But I don't know if we personally, mentally would cope with something like that again, but we still didn't fully act on it, because we never had any idea the extent of water that was coming.

We just want to get our houses back and hope it doesn't happen again.

I don't believe we have a plan in place and that's pretty scary. Maybe a plan is sitting there, but it's not being implemented or out there in the wider community.

If something happened right now, we wouldn't really know what to do and I think that's wrong, because at the end of the day, we're going to do the hard work.

We are the ones who have to pick up the pieces and we have to protect our own businesses.

We can't prepare for a flood like this again, because it was just too big and too powerful.

We could prepare for our major flood level, which is about 9.6 or 9.7 metres, but this flood was double that and it just pummelled everything downstairs.

We've got everything generally built up to the height that saves them from the flood or lets them out of the flood reach, but that's all we can do.

There's so many different avenues of questions; like what to do to fix it? And nobody is coming up with any solid ideas.

Floodwater came up through the floor, it came up and through power points, it came up and through the door.

I mean, how do you prepare for that and how do we fix this?

I think it might break quite a few people.

There are quite a few people who are hanging on now mentally ... if another flood like that comes through again, I, I don't know how they'd cope.

I really don't think so, because I haven't seen any changes in the last 12 months and I'm not aware that it's any different whatsoever.

There's a lot of talk in the town about some of that stuff and it plays on your mind a bit, but I really don't think we're any better prepared.

The creek is still there, not much has happened to that.

They've been through and cleaned it out a bit, but what's going to prevent it from [flooding] in the future?

They've had meetings, that's all they've had, but don't know the outcomes of the meetings because we're not involved with that.

Probably not, but there are so many different factors that come into that, though.

The whole year was different leading up to that and who would know the next track that the flood will go in?

I think you'd be very unlucky for that to happen like that again, but I don't know whether I've talked myself into thinking like that.

I think [the government has] plans to fix that, but I don't think any of that's been finalised yet.

I don't know, I guess there's probably more things going on that I don't know about, but we definitely need to get more warnings in place.

They need to be putting in more remote water monitoring, so if the unexpected levels go up again, we've got time to get a warning.

The only thing that would be different is we wouldn't be hanging around the bridge watching the flood.

The little siren has recently been repaired, the old war siren, but not the big one and other than that, no other mitigation has been done.

I definitely don't think that [local council has] done anything that's significant.

They really need to do some major clearing of the banks of the creek to allow the water to flow and not dam up, and they need to improve the drainage.

They're talking about raising the railway bridge down the bottom [of Bank Street] but I think that's going to be a talk-fest for quite a few years because of the amount of money involved in doing something with that.

But other than that, nothing else has really changed, I don't think.

There's a camera in place on the council website where you can monitor and observe the water levels, but that's all I know.

They've cleaned up, but there's no solid plan in place and that means nothing to business owners at the end of the day, because if we do flood again, we're screwed.

No, not really.

The creek, for one, hasn't been cleaned out and there's been nothing done with our drainage and it's a big problem, because the water comes up through the pipes.

People have talked about lifting the bridge, but that's not the answer when you're looking at a 20 million dollar project in one part of a flood-prone region.

But whether it is that, or building levy banks and redirecting the water, I don't know what the right answers are and I've heard nothing about mitigation.

There hasn't been any action on mitigation, there's been no change whatsoever in my opinion.

There's been no opening of bridges or dredging of creeks and different things, we're all just still waiting.

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