Deja Vu In The Disaster Lanes

Newcastle Herald

Monday June 11, 2007

GREG RAY

IT carried shades of disasters past.

There were elements of the 1974 Sygna storm with a bulk carrier blown aground when it failed to run to sea as a deadly gale approached.

There were aspects of the 1989 earthquake with Newcastle city hit by a dangerous and isolating blow: flash floods this time, rather than a tremor in the earth.

There were even echoes of the 1955 Hunter Valley flood with Maitland playing a breathless waiting game as massive volumes of water began to thunder downriver to the ancient flood plains.

But all disasters are unique and what set this long weekend disaster apart was the variety of its torments.

Just the day before, the biggest story in the Hunter was the approval of the controversial Anvil Hill coalmine, a proposal that had polarised opinion and become a focal point of protest against the coal industry by environmentalists and climate change protesters.

The symbolism of the events of the next 24 hours was not lost on some.

Most Novocastrians woke on Friday to the news that the coal ship Pasha Bulker was being driven aground at Nobbys by a gale and the city watched agog during the wind-blasted day as Westpac rescue helicopter crews gave an amazing display of bravery and skill to safely remove the 22-member crew.

Throughout the day nature intensified its assault.

Rain and hail pelted the region, soaking the ground, filling creeks and drains and preparing the way for the evening's nightmare.

Thousands of homes lost electricity as trees came down on transmission wires.

A couple was swept from a bridge and lost near Clarence Town. Homes were flooded at Cessnock and elsewhere in the valley.

Late in the day came the heartbreaking news that an entire family was lost when their car vanished into the crevasse left when a swollen creek washed away part of the old Pacific Highway on the Central Coast.

Off Newcastle two more ships were in danger of being swept ashore at Merewether and Stockton, fuelling recollections of the 1974 cyclone that left the Norwegian bulk carrier Sygna wrecked on Stockton Beach.

The parallels were clear enough: big swells and raging onshore wind, a warning to ships to weigh anchor and move offshore and a dangerous delay on the part of some masters in following that direction.

Despite the bad news and the warnings that the city was in the deceptive calm of a cyclone's eye, by late afternoon there was still a sense of near complacency among many and as the evening began to close in a long queue of cars was carrying after-work sightseers along Newcastle's main roads to gawk at the stranded ship.

Within an hour or so, many of those sightseers would struggle to make their way home.

More than a few would become stranded.

Immense quantities of rain that had fallen around the region earlier in the day were aggregating in creeks, drains and any low-lying areas, forcing its way to the sea as fast as the limited escape routes would allow.

About 5pm on Friday the heavens opened again over Newcastle with the downpours adding to the overloaded drainage system.

Drivers leaving the city via Glebe Road about this time had to plough through a mud-brown sea of water up to the top of their wheels.

Parks and streets merged under the water surface and it was already difficult to see where roads ended and footpaths began.

Sedans and family cars nosed cautiously through the mess, sticking to the centre lanes where the water was shallowest.

Four-wheel-drives barrelled along the left lane, exulting in their invulnerability and throwing roof-high waves over smaller cars and the few hapless pedestrians unlucky enough to be stranded in the deluge.

Elsewhere in the city and Lake Macquarie the picture was the same.

Every low point in the road system became a floodway and eddies full of debris gushed at unexpected angles.

Over the next few hours the water kept on rising and flash-flooding storm drains burst their banks, making roads rivers.

As the levels rose and the sheer mass of the surging waters increased motorists were suddenly in great danger.

Cars stalled, electronic systems failed. Some floated away. Some filled with water, forcing drivers to risk wading into torrents, some of which were shoulder-deep.

Along these murky rivers, houses and shops filled with dirty water and many people faced the unthinkable prospect of evacuating their homes and abandoning their property to the elements.

Newcastle, Hamilton, Lambton, Wallsend, Cardiff, Warners Bay and many other areas faced the same problems.

The State Emergency Service, already mobilised to meet the demands of the day, shifted into higher gear and evacuation centres were established to meet the new crisis.

Individual acts of bravery and selflessness stood out as some motorists risked their own safety to help others stranded and panic-stricken in the dark waters.

Many people, stranded in Newcastle as rising water cut off all exits, found refuge in the homes of kind strangers, bunked down in their cars or were offered places to stay by shop owners whose buildings had dry upper floors.

During the night, some young men patrolled the flooded streets in wetsuits, boats, surfboards and surf-skis, rescuing stranded and freezing people from car roofs and ferrying them to safety.

But nature had much more in store for the sodden, battered region, from Murrurundi, at the valley's head, where heavy snow stopped traffic crossing the range, to Newcastle, where the city awaited the punishment that lay on the other side of the storm's eye.

Those Novocastrians who had a warm bed were lulled into apprehensive sleep by the sirens that relentlessly punctuated the night with a vague sense of menace.

The second front of the cyclonic wind system struck after midnight with shocking ferocity.

Houses were unroofed, windows blown in and trees, already vulnerable in the soaking ground, were torn apart or blown over.

Many toppled onto homes, buildings and cars.

Many more fell on power lines and soon swathes of the Hunter and Central Coast were without electricity.

Power lines whipped and sparked and where high-voltage lines contacted they exploded in green fireballs.

Suddenly great numbers of people found themselves without power and without communication as modern cordless telephones failed to work and mobile networks staggered under the damage and the demand.

In many parts of the city only those with battery-powered radios could receive the ABC's emergency broadcasts, which offered a reassuring and unfailing link to the outside world.

Saturday dawned grey, cold and rainy and Hunter people woke to streets full of shattered trees, flood debris and abandoned cars parked in crazy attitudes where their despairing owners had left them.

Looters began their work, not only on the abandoned cars but on the flood-damaged shops.

Some stooped so low as to strip gear from stranded ambulances.

Confronted with forecasts of more bad weather and the prospect of days without power or even water, people flocked to whatever shops were able to trade.

In many cases it was cash only, with all transactions of the manual and painstaking kind.

Queues formed wherever batteries, torches, gas bottles and camping stoves could be bought.

Lines of people with gas bottles waited for fills.

Petrol stations did a roaring trade in bagged ice.

Battery transistor radios sold like hot cakes.

Westfield Kotara, still a construction zone, was a strange sight with its car park full of flood debris, water pouring through holes in the roof but with hundreds of shoppers intent on doing business as usual.

By lunchtime it was all but impossible to buy a six-volt battery, a camping lantern or stove and it took luck and patience to find or fill a gas bottle.

Gas barbecues were dusted off and adapted as neighbourhood kitchens.

The expected Saturday afternoon gale did not arrive, giving power workers a valuable reprieve and the opportunity to reconnect tens of thousands of homes.

Even so, tens of thousands spent Saturday night huddled around candles, listening to their transistor radios.

Eyes and ears were now on Singleton and Maitland as people waited for the deluge, in a situation reminiscent of the great flood of 1955.

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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