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Northern Rivers floods: tales from the trenches Following the first round of levee-breaking floods in Lismore, SPLASH! spoke with some of the swimming pool and spa people affected, and some of those who went into the devastation to help. Here we have two stories, one from a pool shop owner in Lismore, and one from a pool construction contractor from Queensland who went down to help. These interviews were held not long after the first unprecedented flood. Sadly, within a month, a second powerful flood came through and undid much of the recovery work.
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“If we had six inches of water in the shop, it would have been fine. But it was six metres!”
Above: The Poolwerx team salvaged what they could from the Lismore shop 30
SPLASH!
April/May 2022
ohn McAuley, Poolwerx franchise partner, has two stores, one at Lismore at the epicentre of the flood, and another at Lennox Head on the coast which was less affected by the weather. He also runs a servicing arm out of the Lennox store. “We had been getting BOM warnings for the Lismore area for a couple of weeks,” he says. “We could see very heavy rain in Brisbane, but it didn’t seem to be budging south of the border. We’re about 100 kilometres south of the border.” McAuley says that between Thursday February 24 and midday on Saturday February 26 they had very little rain. But on Saturday afternoon the rain started. “I live in Byron Bay and I’d seen very minimal flooding there, so I felt a little removed from the whole thing until Sunday morning when one of our Lismore staff texted, ‘What are you going to do about the shop?’ “I headed over, and my wife came too so she could check out her workplace in Lismore. On the way we were listening to ABC local radio, and they were talking about sandbagging in Lismore.” When they arrived, they noticed the shop across the road had sandbags out the front to keep the water out. That prompted McAuley to raise goods and supplies higher in the shop. “I put pumps up on the counter, and the printer and computer and expensive equipment. I had some robots, so I stacked them up on top of a pallet of salt. If we had six inches of water in the shop, it would have been fine. But it was six metres! It wouldn’t have mattered how high I put them, nothing would have saved them short of getting them out of the shop.” No one had an inkling of how big the flood was going to be. “The 1954 flood, the biggest one, was 12.17 metres. This one was two metres above that, 14.37 metres. They built a levee in 2005 but once it tops that, the water can’t get back out.” McAuley says he wasn’t alone in underestimating the size of the flood, and that even long-time locals were caught off guard.