NSW's "Natural" Disaster - Flood Topped 100-Yr Flood Line By More Than Six Feet

[hatrack]

EDIT

I don’t know how we can recover. When will the next flood come – or will the bushfires get us next? I see on Twitter that the PM has Covid and is calling this flood a “natural disaster”. This same narrative is parroted by the government. But there is nothing natural about it. This is climate change in action, and pretending we aren’t experiencing a climate catastrophe right now is dangerously irresponsible. Remember, we are only at the beginning of the hockey stick curve. Things are going to get much worse.

Until the pandemic created insane house prices, Lismore was an affordable place to live. North Lismore, being on the floodplain and victim of the CBD levy rather than a beneficiary, was the most affordable and is home to some of the most endearing, as well as the most vulnerable, members of our community. For almost everyone on the floodplain, flood insurance is a near impossibility, with premiums close to $30,000 a year. Despite people spending more than $100,000 to raise their homes above the nominal one-in-100-year flood height, this flood exceeded such levels by more than 2m. For many people in North Lismore, this meant more than 5m of water on the ground, drowning homes, lives and people’s futures under a sea of mud.

We are at the threshold of climate catastrophe and it’s communities like ours that are bearing the brunt of it. It has not just lapped at our doorstep, it smashed right through our doors. It has destroyed our CBD and our loved ones have drowned to death. These climate catastrophes are going to happen more frequently, with more intensity, more damage and more deaths, and we will see more communities collapsing.

Back at the frontline of the climate crisis, we set up a wash station. Our neighbours, drenched in muddy water, come by. Their boat capsized and they lost their phones and laptops to the dreaded waters. We hug, adrenaline and shock pulsing through our veins, preventing tears from forming. More rain is coming. Maybe it’ll wash some of the dirt off the house, we say. No, no more rain. Please. I see I have missed a call. I listen to the message, it’s the SES. Do we still need to be rescued? As I write this, fuel has run out, our water is about to run out and the one supermarket left has no food on its shelves. What is our government doing?

EDIT/END

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/04/the-pm-calls-this-a-natural-disaster-its-not-natural-its-climate-change-smashing-down-our-doors

[Mickju]

1. For five years in the 70s I lived in Australia.

I was a member of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Every year we would travel down to Lismore to give a concert. It was such a nice quiet small city. This makes me very sad. Through the years since I returned to the US, I often wished I had stayed in Australia, but now it seems that they are suffering much more than we are from climate change. Of course, there isn't anywhere in the world that will be spared.