Liam McNally
Melton State Emergency Services (SES) volunteer Khawti Ling said her car fell silent as they approached Kerang, from Swan Hill.
“We felt over-awed by the volumes of water on fields and properties,” she said.
Melton SES volunteers have recently been deployed in Swan Hill, Echuca, and Mildura dealing with a flooding situation that’s “far from over”.
Melton SES unit deputy controller Karl Sass said that “people are quite surprised to get a knock at the door” when you’ve arrived at their property by boat, but during his Mildura deployment in the last week of November, this is how they were accessing properties isolated by water.
His position was in community outreach, helping residents deal with slow moving floods which over months are bringing vast quantities of water down the Murray from NSW, and causing a feeling of “fatigue” in the community.
“They want to get to the other side and recover and that sort of thing but at the moment they’re very much still in the thrust of the flood emergency,” he said.
One property Mr Sass arrived at by boat to see it was a matter of hours before the owner’s homemade levees would break.
“I had to advise that gentlemen to evacuate as it just wasn’t possible to get that much sandbagging via boat to him,” he said.
“The gentlemen had clearly been awake for a very long time and put in a lot of work, but that’s just the reality of where he’s situated.
“The impact on residents is major, it really is dangerous and it disrupts their lives.”
Mr Sass said the Mildura floods have started to fade from Melbourne’s news headlines, but “the situation is far from over”.
“The flooding still hadn’t peaked, last time I checked, so they’re still facing increasing risk,” he said.
