One man has died and authorities hold grave fears for another three people reported missing in unprecedented flooding on the New South Wales mid-north coast.
The premier, Chris Minns, said the region had experienced “a very difficult 48 hours” with more to come as communities braced for 100mm of additional rainfall over the next 24 hours and up to 300mm in some isolated areas.
“The grim reality is that we’re getting more and more used to this because there’s more and more of these natural disasters,” Minns said on Thursday.
NSW police said the body of a 63-year-old man was found on Wednesday afternoon at a home affected by flood waters on North Moto Road at Moto and a report would be prepared for the coroner.
The acting police commissioner, Peter Thurtell, said three more people had been reported missing: a 60-year-old woman in the Dorrigo area, a 25-year-old man in the Wauchope area who was believed to have driven into flood waters, and a 49-year-old man who may have walked into flood waters.
“But that’s all yet to be confirmed. These people are reported missing,” Thurtell said.
“I won’t pre-empt any results of anything, but obviously, as we said, we hold grave fears for all three individuals.”
Minns expressed sympathy for the deceased man’s family and community who he said would need “to take time to rebuild and recover as a result of that death”.
“I must also say that we’re bracing for more bad news in the next 24 hours. This natural disaster has been terrible for this community,” he said.
Minns said there were 50,000 people living in areas that have been asked to prepare to evacuate and could be isolated.
He said there were 9,500 properties in the direct vicinity of those warnings.
The NSW State Emergency Service commissioner, Mike Wassing, said there were 145 flood warnings in place as of Thursday morning and 34 of those were emergency warnings.
He said emergency services were focusing on areas from Taree up to Coffs Harbour, including communities at Port Macquarie, Kempsey and Bellingen, all of which had active flooding.
“What the community can do to help us is to heed those warnings – relocate early, evacuate if it is safe to do so, when you receive these emergency evacuation orders.”
The NSW emergency services minister, Jihad Dib, said “we’ve seen more rain and more flooding in the mid and the north coast area than we’ve ever seen before”.
He said 2,500 personnel, including 2,200 SES workers, were in the field helping flood-affected communities.
Heavy rain was predicted to hammer the mid-north coast of NSW and further north until Friday morning, with “heavy, localised intense rainfall” expected to cause more difficulty and anguish for people isolated by rising flood waters.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) issued a severe weather warning shortly after 4am on Thursday which expanded the zone from the already badly hit Hunter Valley and mid-north coast regions to include the northern tablelands, northern rivers and north west slopes and plains.
“Areas of heavy rainfall are expected to persist through Thursday as a weak low-pressure system develops within the trough, and it slowly moves further southwards throughout the day,” the BoM warning said.
It said heavy rainfall was forecast to continue over north-eastern parts of the state overnight on Wednesday and during Thursday, bringing 24-hour rainfall totals of up to 300mm in some areas.
Wassing said rescue conditions had been difficult and dangerous.
“I cannot stress enough that it is important to heed the warnings of evacuations,” he said. “I cannot guarantee that our crews will be able to immediately rescue people.”
Evacuation centres have been set up at Dungog, Gloucester, Taree, Manning Point, Wingham, Bulahdelah, Tuncurry Beach, Kempsey and Port Macquarie.
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Helen Holliday runs a medical practice with her husband in the centre of Taree.
On Wednesday it was too early to assess whether it had been affected by flood waters because the roads into town were inaccessible.
“We did the best we could, sandbagged, but the power had to be turned off, so we’ve lost all of our vaccines,” Holliday said.
With the practice’s systems down, she said the doctors were not able to work.
“It’s just really frustrating when the community needs you and people are so stressed,” she said.
Holliday said on Tuesday night many local businesses had evacuated, with some shops moving their stock to higher ground. She said some cafes and restaurants that had been helping community members by providing free meals had since flooded.
Holliday said areas including Taree South and the suburb of Purfleet were “a disaster” and “everyone in town will know someone who has lost everything”.
“How much does it take for people to understand that we have a climate emergency?” she said.
“We’re going to have to work to try to mitigate this. It’s going to happen across Australia more and more, we’re going to see these huge events.”
On Wednesday, the Manning River surpassed its 1929 record flood level.
The chief executive of Natural Hazards Research Australia, Andrew Gissing, said the record-breaking flooding along the Manning River had an estimated frequency of occurrence of one in 500 years on average.
“Though it is too early to know the extent that climate change has contributed to the extreme rainfalls, we do know that under a warmer climate that our atmosphere holds more water and that heavy rain events are more likely,” he said.
Evacuation centres have been opened at:
The federal emergency management minister, Kristy McBain, said the commonwealth had activated the disaster recovery allowance for the Kempsey, Port Macquarie, Dungog and MidCoast council areas.
McBain said climate change was driving more frequent disasters around the world. “It is not year after year but month after month” that some communities were being hit, she said.
Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
