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NEWS Aussie Flood Disaster = Human Spirit!
By Anthony Kilner
We contacted Adam Gibson from Parents with Questions to see if we could get some information from on the ground.
Hi Adam, how are you and the family doing?
“This storm has produced the heaviest rain I’ve seen in my whole life. I grew up in Queensland; I know what a storm feels like. This is next level. “We’re fine personally, but lots of friends and others are not… Murwillumbah, Woodburn and Coraki, these are low income areas, people with not a lot, no flood insurance, low lying. Houses are now wet up to the roof cavity, right up to the second story.
“These people have nowhere to go and what do they do? It’s an adrenalised response, community response and exhaustion is kicking in. Where do they go, how they come back from it, how will they survive it? Who knows?
“What the hell do you do next? Clean up alone, God knows how long, mould problem kicking in - black mould, finding tradies, materials, there’s not a lot of hope. There are thousands of houses destroyed in Lismore alone.”
The Government doesn’t appear to be doing much?
“Mate, I was on ground last week, tidying up, mainly in Lismore and Bangalow. I didn’t see any emergency response, no government response at all! Local response teams are great, other than that, no response at all. All major rescues were done by civilians!
“I know the guys who coordinated that. His wife was home on the geo-locator app, finding people who were sending out messages for help, people saying, ‘I’m stuck in the roof cavity, help me’. There was very limited signal, by the way, as the internet went down. She went to satellite mapping, somehow she used IPhone, don’t know how she did it, she had people out in a tinny, local fisherman and stuff, rescuing. Unfortunately, there have been deaths.
“I dunno mate, the government cannot break us! They haven’t counted on people looking after each other. All the division, all the shit they have put on us in the last couple of years, hatred, masks, check your passport, that was there a few weeks ago. Well, that’s gone out the window. People are giving now, donating time, money, caring for each other.
“They’re up to their elbows in mud all day, giving away cars, taking people into their homes. You can’t kill love in people, you can’t knock it out entirely, it’s always there when it comes right down to it. The core essence in people is something they just don’t understand, when I say ‘they’, whatever this nepharious agenda we’ve been coping with, they can’t cope with the end of it.”
I heard stories of people, unjabbed, not allowed to fill sandbags and more?
“Yes, that’s one of the first things they put out, if you want to fill sandbags for the SES. This is two days after the waters came mind you, and you’ll need a double passport! Like (swear words) it’s just daft, beyond ridiculous. In the meantime, people are just organising themselves, still out there doing it. I’ve been on the phone all day organising; it’s a community effort, community led, on a scale it’s hard to imagine right now. Evacuation centre is community led, no official coordinators, it’s all community led.
“I’ve got a young local guy, he did a hand over to the army and SES yesterday. Dom Perrottet met with him, asked him what to do. So, the Premier and police commissioner asked him what to do. He did a formal hand over to the
army, he’s a civilian, unpaid and unjabbed by the way, and he’s handing over to an entire defence force?
“I have a mate in Woodburn right now, telling the army what to do, go where needed, none of them know what to do, she’s like, “Move that from here. Take that there.” They’re like, thanks for telling us, we don’t know what to do!
“In Bangalow though, this is what I’ve taken from all this, for the last 3 or 4 weeks, I’ve not known where to go with Parents with Questions, we’ve done our job, there are people that have made up their minds now. I’ve been sick, recovering slowly, headspace depressed with it.
“Having said that, the response I’ve seen in the community now, is, firstly, we didn’t need the government to begin with in this regard, we need roads and things, but not for this. They weren’t there with medical help, no hospitals open, no medivac, all choppers in air are private. Everything happening is privately funded and privately done. “Secondly, there was no fuel, no food, no internet, no phone across most areas, all communications down, supermarkets empty and fuel stations shut for about a week. This proves to me how reliant we are on a very flawed system. This is a really good opportunity to grow some food, have some basic resilience in our lifestyle. We need to know who lives next door, so you can ask for help, so we can connect and look after each other.
“Thirdly, this sense of complete absolute love humanity has for itself, in action, love in action, is just remarkable. That has been refreshing to me, recognising it’s alive and well in each and every individual. The psychopaths, the sociopaths and money grabbing pricks at the top, whoever we’ve been angry at in the last couple of years, they can’t beat what’s actually alive in the community. Unfortunately, it requires a crisis to bring it out for people to start looking out for each other. The crisis that you and I have tuned into over the last two years has been pretty obvious, larger global crisis, take over, health crisis with the jab, but this is a bit more direct, and it just shows
what people are capable of. This is the same reason Parents with Questions got millions of people supporting it so quickly.
“It’s the same reason so many boats are out there, so many people doing mud army clean up right now. That’s the good news, it’s almost like we don’t need to bash the government, they’ve proven themselves redundant anyway.”
Anyone wanting to help out flood survivors, please be discerning in where you send goods and money. There are a lot of people on the ground doing the most amazing work and they cannot be thanked enough. These people are the real heroes!
Ed’s Note: Hollie Mariconte is in the thick of things in the Northern Rivers. Here is her take on living through this disaster. “For the last 12 days I have been on the ground here in the Northern Rivers NSW, in what has been one of Australia’s most devastating natural disasters. There hasn’t been a day that I haven’t cried, felt anger and heartache for all the people and animals affected.
“I have been welcomed into their communities, listened to their stories and their personal experiences and I can honestly say many are feeling abandoned by their government. They are traumatised, in shock and heartbroken, most having lost everything. There has been an overwhelming response from the Australian people, in true Aussie spirit they have literally saved the day. As time moves on and all the volunteers get back to their lives I hope to continue to cover the rebuild of Northern Rivers NSW in an effort to keep this tragedy in the forefront of people’s minds. They will need help for many years to come.”
Hollie is working tirelessly in the Northern Rivers area. For more information check out Hollie’s:
Website
www.holliemariconte.com
@holliemaricontephotography
Image Credits: Hollie Mariconte Video Credits: Geoff Canto & Gary Howard
