An estimated 10,000 properties may have been damaged in record-breaking flooding in New South Wales and thousands remain isolated, as communities begin to clean up after “devastating” impacts.
Flood waters have begun to subside in some areas and weather conditions have improved on the mid-north coast, where severe weather warnings were cancelled on Friday night.
There have been five confirmed deaths in the region during the flooding with two more deaths confirmed on Friday. About 50,000 people remain isolated by flood waters, even as clean up and damage assessments get under way.
On the ground in NSW’s flood-affected mid-north coast, the premier, Chris Minns, said the state could have seen “hundreds of deaths if it wasn’t for the bravery, the courage of emergency service workers in the last 72 hours”.
But he said risks of further deaths remained, even as flood waters receded.
“Now that we’re through the worst of the weather, we want people to be safe during the clean up phase.”
Minns said emergency services crews’ first priority remained saving “people at imminent risk of death”, followed by supplying food, water and shelter to affected communities, ahead of the clean-up operation.
The NSW state emergency services commissioner, Mike Wassing, said while flood waters were now receding from communities across the state, those affected were starting to comprehend the extent of the damage and the slow road to recovery.
“In my experience, the worst impacts that people feel are often after the event,” Wassing said. “The impacts are devastating … to see personal possessions or your business impacted. That is usually felt afterwards … the worst is over but we still have a lot to do from a community perspective.”
The clean-up would be “significant” Wassing said.
“This is not a few days’ operation; this is potentially a few weeks’ operations and we coordinate that in the context of the receding flood waters and working with community members.
“We are conscious that many of the community members are still in evacuation centres here today. They are tired and they want to get home.”
There are still 148 flood warnings in place in NSW, 31 of those at emergency level.
Emergency services have conducted 768 flood rescues, the vast majority on NSW’s mid-north coast. Crews performed 52 rescues overnight, mostly of people who tried to drive through flood waters.
Wassing said the emergency services response would shift from rescue to resupply over the weekend, with dozens of homes and communities still isolated.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s senior meteorologist, Gabrielle Woodhouse, said it was likely flood warnings would be withdrawn over the coming week. However, strong winds gusting at up to 90kmh were expected.
“Across the weekend, we will still see generally dry conditions along the coastal areas and we’ll see a cold front that is going to approach from the west. With that we will see winds increasing.”
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The body of a man believed to be his 80s was found on Friday inside a burnt-out vehicle in the shed of a Cooplacurripa property, about 50km north west of Taree.
Severe weather conditions had prevented emergency crews accessing the man’s home when a concern for his welfare was raised two days earlier.
The body of another man, in his late 70s, was found on Friday after his vehicle appeared to have been swept off a causeway at Nana Glen near Coffs Harbour.
A man missing in Nymboida has been found but police have not ruled out floods as a factor in the disappearance of another man in Bellingen.
As the wild weather moved south on Friday, it brought heavy rain to large parts of Sydney with up to 200mm in some areas, causing train delays and a warning that visitors to the Sydney Vivid festival launch on Friday evening might experience delays.
On Friday night, there was a severe weather warning for the South Coast and parts of Illawarra, Southern Tablelands and Snowy Mountains as the system moved to the Victorian border.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said disaster assistance would be extended to another three local government areas – Armidale, Muswellbrook and Walcha – taking the number of council areas eligible for assistance to 19.
Personal hardship assistance grants of $180 per individual or $900 per family will be available, along with $1m community recovery grants for affected local councils.
This assistance is separate to the disaster recovery allowance announced for the local government areas of Kempsey, Port Macquarie, Mid Coast and Dungog, which Albanese said would be available from 2pm on Monday.
Insurers have already received more than 1,600 claims relating to the severe flooding, with more expected over the weekend, the Insurance Council of Australia’s chief executive, Andrew Hall, said.
Where it is safe to do so, insurers have stationed claims staff in communities, and more claims staff will be called in once teams are able to access flood affected areas. Hall told the ABC that since 2022, when there were 230,000 disaster insurance claim payouts, the industry has staff on all year round.
“It’s no longer just a case that we have a workforce over the summer holiday period when we usually have these events,” he said. “We’re now seeing a disaster season really stretched throughout the year, and insurers have had to rebuild their workforces to be able to cope with that.”
Albanese said people who found it hard to get insurance for extreme weather events represented a “real challenge” because climate science has forecasted that such events would become more frequent and intense.
“It is a challenge that we need to deal with and be conscious of, and we certainly are. And that’s why we’re engaged directly not just with the Insurance Council … but also individual insurance companies,” he said.
Hall said insurers had been trying to rebuild their insurance pools since 2022, and the flood defences for towns that were hit every few years needed to be improved. He said driving down building costs would also help reduce premium rises.
