WARMING THE COCKLES OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS SINCE 1986 The Byron Shire Echo • Volume 36 #52 • June 8, 2022 • www.echo.net.au
Flood disaster highlights govt failures
Floods prompt land use rethink
Hans Lovejoy
Paul Bibby
Residents, community group representatives and a few councillors packed out the Mullum Ex-Services Club on Monday to provide personal stories, ask questions and offer solutions to the devastating floods that hit the Shire’s north on Feburary 28. It was one of the community meetings being chaired by the Independent Flood Inquiry, which is led by Professor Mary O’Kane and former Police Commissioner, Michael Fuller. Both attended the forum. Common themes that emerged during the forum included the lack of a disaster plan by Council, the lack of drainage maintanence, the exorbitant cost of flood insurance and the bureau of meteorology (BoM) not providing accurate information in the lead-up to the flood. Failings within the initial emergency response by all levels of government and emergency services were also highlighted, which resulted in a community-led response to the disaster for up to five days after Feburary 28. The NSW government website for flood grants was also criticised as being inadequate, and there was a call to dredge creeks and reopen intermittently closed and open lakes or lagoons (ICOLLs). The meeting heard of residents still living in mouldy homes and others still cut off by landslips in the valleys behind Mullumbimby, three months after. Byron Bay fire brigade Captain, John Riley, said that Council lacked a disaster plan, something which is standard with other councils across the nation. Such a plan, he said, would trigger emergency
A rethink of how and where we build in the Shire is on the cards, with Byron Council staff proposing that a detailed discussion paper explore these and other floodrelated issues. After a similar exploration in Lismore, Byron Council staff are proposing that a paper be prepared titled After the 2022 Floods: Working out Possibilities Together. Councillors will vote on whether or not to proceed with the paper at this week’s Council planning meeting.
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Natural disaster management Independent flood inquiry chairs, former police commissioner Michael Fuller and Professor Mary O’Kane, held a public meeting on Monday in Mullum. Photo Jeff ‘High Flood Mark’ Dawson services into action. Another failing, highlighted by another emergency responder, was that emergency service communications are reliant on Telstra. When a North Coast Telstra tower was knocked out of action from the floods, the entire region was without a Telstra service for at least a week, hampering rescue efforts. One SES member, who said they were still traumatised by the experience, acknowledged the response was inadequate but said, ‘we tried our best’.
Community-led response One of the team leaders with the initial community-led responders, Ella Rose Goninan, said that for four to five days after the flood,
hundreds of spontaneous volunteers stood up in the absence of emergency services and continued to do so for weeks after. Prior to the flood, Ella told the gathering, from her long-term work with HHUG, Renew Fest, and previously with Resilient Byron, she had relevant contacts in her phone so she could help straight away. She described those first days of life saving rescues, door-knocking residents, organising hundreds of clean-up teams, receiving and distributing thousands of donated goods, sending medical, food and emergency supplies to isolated valleys, and establishing communications owing to no Telstra connection. Ella also said that the community group were forced to move from the
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Civic Hall by Resilience NSW and Council with only 24 hours’ notice. This was despite her group still operating full time, while little government support was offered. Ms Goninan acknowledged robust exchanges throughout that period, and said despite trying to find a solution, she felt she was, ‘Now under attack’. ‘There was little leadership or support throughout. On three separate occasions I requested mediation from the Mayor [Michael Lyon] and Council’s then recovery officer, as we were needing help with the understandable stakeholder challenges that were happening inside such extreme circumstances. These requests were not met’. ▶ Continued on page 2
Now’s the time for those reforms, says former MLC Richard Jones ▶ p8
In her report on the issue, Council’s Director of Sustainable Environment and Economy, Shannon Burt, said there was a need to review the Council’s settlement strategies on the back of the floods and respond to the ‘wider consideration of climate change and natural disaster management’. ‘To assist these strategy reviews and complement other work plans and programs for Council, it is now proposed to prepare a high-level discussion paper to set out a framework for land use and planning response to the flood events and identify principles/ actions that could apply across the strategies, plans and programs more broadly as a result.’ Ms Burt proposed that the discussion paper should consider how the Shire could ‘build back better’ – rebuilding in a way that was more resilient to future floods and new ▶ Continued on page 3
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