Floods Evans Head northern NSW 3 hours south of Brisbane
This note is a report from northern NSW flood zone.
Aquabelle is moored at Evans Head in northern NSW. When the Richmond River that exits to the ocean at Ballina floods, it overflows at Woodburn in sheet floods at Woodburn. This river system backs up to Lismore, a major inland city. I have a small farm at Booerie Creek just north of Lismore where my daughter and granddaughter live. I have been aboard Aquabelle, an Ocean Alexander Mark 1 flush deck as blessed new owner (many of you will know of former owner's many posts to Trawler Forum) since December 4-21 when we arrived at Evans Head. I was aboard during the entire flood event.
Lismore was totally smashed by the peak flood which hit 14.3 meters--2.5 meters higher than past highest recorded in 1974, pretty repeated in 2015 when Lismore was devastated. This time, the flood wasn't simply a catastrophic flood with post-flood recovery stretching for months. Lismore is used to that. This time, the flood was a demolition event. Thousands of houses were totally submerged to top of second flood, with hundreds rescued by the tinnie (aluminum dinghy) fleet that mobilized as the SES emergency response units were overwhelmed the scale of the event.
At our farm, my daughter called me at 3.30am on peak flood night alarmed by the rising lake. Her house looks down into a steep gully with the farm dam close to the house. Normally Booerie Creek is 4 m above sea level and about 400 meters across the valley to the west. To the east behind the house is the North Lismore Plateau escarpment. Our farm gate on the road is at 10m. When she called, the floods at Lismore had reached 14 meter and backed up to Booerie Creek. Lismore is flood central because it is at the center of 3 separate watersheds. One or two flooded watersheds make for a typical Lismore flood. The 2017 and now the 2022 floods hit all the watersheds with gigantic amounts of rainfall in 30-50 knot winds, thunder an and lightning. When that happens, the rivers and tributaries all back up--how much depends on the runoff in the local watershed. To reassure her, I pulled up the contour map showing that the flood at 14.5 meters was still 4 meters below the verandah and that they were safe and should stay put. In any case, they had nowhere to go being flooded in with a five year old. Well not quite true...I built a shed last in 2020 up the hill as a covid retreat when the Australian government banned travel (which is why I was on the hunt for a trawler to move back to the coast) which would have gained them another 2-3 meters.
Most of Lismore was not so lucky and a massive evacuation ensued.
But not just Lismore--this was the entire northern rivers NSW region. Mullumbimby, Brunswick Heads, Coraki, and all the smaller towns and villages and individual farms were also under water at the same time, meaning they were all pretty much on their own in terms of response and rescue instead of the normal regional response on one flooded town. Downriver, Woodburn was simply obliterated by the vast flood sweeping down from Lismore and across the entire floodplain.
As families were pulled out by the SES (state emergency services) and the private tinnie fleet, the only place they could go was Evans Head, itself under assault once the Richmond overflowed at Woodburn into the Evans River--they are normally kept separate by a small weir on a linking canal.
At Evans, we are moored in the Evans Head Fishing Cooperative embayment built into the south side of the river about 40 years ago. A rockwall separates the deep channel from the moorings with a single narrow entrance at the east end where the coop buildings are located. The normal tidal range is about 1.8 meters. It is a classic fishing coop mooring, not a marina. Each mooring has 4 hexagonal concrete pilings, 2 inner and 2 outer pilings. The inner pilings are served by a narrow wooden jetty and have a rubber rub rail to grind against the trawlers (only one is left out of fleet of 50 or more in the past).
Evans Coop on Gmaps
Evans Head Fishermens Cooperative · 12-32 Ocean Dr, Evans Head NSW 2473, Australia
To moor without slack tides due to the tidal range and fixed mooring points on the pilings, we installed a rig of chain in recycled firehose at the top and bottom of the piling; and a vertical dyneema line with friction ring attached to a strop to slide up and down with the vessel on the rising and falling tides. With four point mooring using both sides of the mooring, it was possible to create a stable 4 point mooring standing off the pilings. We have already experienced some serious storms including a 40-50 knot southerly the day that we arrived in Evans Head and we are confident the web of 24 mm 3 strand nylon mooring lines and dyneema rig is trustworthy.
However, access is difficult and dangerous from the jetty the stern stairwell and swim platform. So a week before the flood, we installed a 5.7 meter custom catamaran pontoon to which we plan to attach to a hinged gangway that in turn will attach to a hinge on a concrete block on the rockwall.
Party BBQ Pontoon Boats used as Work Barge, work platform, Docks, Moving Craft, Transport Barge, Croc Boat, Cattle Transport and Fishing!
The week before the flood, we poured the concrete and were planning to install the gangway about now after it cured.
However, the flood had other ideas.
On the first peak flood Sunday Feb 27th evening, we watched apprehensively as the level reached the same level as a storm event about a month early atop a King tide that saw the jetty submerged. Then it kept on rising. That night the high tide it simply stayed high as the river overrun overwhelmed the ocean water. As the flood started to surge down the Richmond and overflowed into Evans, the next night high tide saw the flood waters submerge the rockwall entirely until it was about a meter above the road. Up to that point, I had "slider" room on the dyneema lines, but the port side was setup closer to the pilings than starboard, and the lines had to be eased as the boat rose. Through the night, the raging torrent sluiced across the rockwall onto the stern of Aquabelle and the pontoon (at least the concrete was curing quickly faster under water than it would in the air--provided it wasn't washed away). I was concerned mostly about a large tree trunk spearing across the rockwall; and about the poor mooring lines of the 20 tonne aluminum motor vessel moored in the next mooring to the west--if it had come adrift it would have rotated onto us and all bets were off. We had "Minniebelle" the inflatable rigged and suspended on the port side ready to bale with spotlight and life jackets in case the flood suddenly rose another meter or two and it became untenable.
As dawn broke, the full scale of the flood became visible. It was frankly terrifying. The river was a rapids with large standing waves curving over the surface and running at 10-15 knots. Many trees went past out to sea and were washed up on the surf beach or further out to become deadhead hazards to passing vessels. By now, we were completely an island as the river on the lower south side had encircled lowlands to create a separate flow from the backed up shallow estuary to the west to the south and then back to the river right through the coop facility. As the waters rose on Sunday and Monday, the south side of the moorings became, well, a waterfall, and then the water kept on rising. Many boats were pinned down by short lines and a few rub rails were catching on top of the concrete pilings. But no-one sank. And inside the embayment, there actually wasn't much current so provided you could absorb the sluicing top meter off the main river over the breakwater, it was simply a matter of sitting tight and praying for the rain to stop.
Now, a week later, we are still all shocked. There are a couple of hundred of Woodburn families in evacuation centers in Evans with nowhere to go--their town is essentially obliterated.
The big question being asked by everyone, at all levels, is what to do differently?
We bought the farmlet at Booerie Creek precisely because the house was 6 meters above the peak 1974 flood. But 1974 is no guide now; who knows what more intense and frequent storms will bring. The 6 meters safety margin is now down to 3.5 meters. Should we sell and move higher?
We moved Aquabelle to Evans Head to be in a safe mooring close to Booerie Creek, easy day driving distance. Should we move to the south side of the coop and away from the rockwall. Should we simply admit that staying on a boat at Evans is now of uncertain safety and we need to move to Yamba (too far from the farm) to the marina which is at risk but modern design and facilities (albeit Yamba itself was cut off by the floods last week until yesterday!).
These are the kind of micro-decisions that everyone is making in the northern rivers NSW. And we were the lucky ones--dry, relatively safe, did not lose much of anything, just stress and shock. My five year old grand daughters state school was flood-proof built; but was devastated. So suddenly no school; and the next state school within reach, also gone. So it goes multiplied by tens of thousands.
At the macro-level, simply rebuilding Lismore in the flood zone is not financially feasible. At least half or more of the businesses will not come back. The rest will be hobbled by no flood cover. It's time for the state to make some basic decisions about planned retreat, and to locate and build the new CBD infrastructure. This cuts against the free market grain of the state and federal governments; but I predict that public pressure will be so strong that they will have to adjust, and figure out an equitable way to distribute the cost of the relocation and construction of a new CBD that doesn't simply impose all the costs on those who lost all. The floods also amplify the already super-critical shortage of affordable housing as tens of thousands of families need immediate and on-going places to stay.
This flood will also have a political effect at the federal level, with elections looming. The Australian PM has been in covid-induced isolation during these floods, just as he was MIA during the 2019 firestorms on holiday in Hawaii. The only visible federal response has been deployment (slowly) of Australian Defense Force personnel to assist police and SES. Except for a few denialists, no-one can argue credibly that we do not have a climate problem in Australia which, as the driest continent, is highly sensitive to climate variability in the short term, and cumulative climate change in the long-term. More Australians now live in fire and flood zones than ever before, and are more vulnerable than ever before to climate impacts. How Australia mitigates and adapts is now on the political agenda and those who fail to respond will be swept aside over the coming months and years.
Meanwhile, we are the midst of a global pandemic that is complicating emergency operations and evacuations; we went through a tsunami a month ago; Putin is making veiled nuclear war threats in the Ukraine conflict; and there are still two months of wet season here in the northern rivers. Last night we had a powerful storm squall come through from the northwest with cyclonic winds, lightning and rain--only this time, it was short and sharp.
What else could possibly go wrong?
You can see videos on Evans Head Information Exchange Facebook page (I try to avoid Facebook but in this instance, the page was where all the decentralized, ad hoc and improvised coordination happened to mobilize tinnies, food, housing, medical supplies)
Log into Facebook
my update vids--search for:
"Evans Riverfront Update--Flood Receding Very Slowly"
"Riverfront rockwall high tide update"
"Evans River Max Flood 0915 from Coop Rockwall"
There is also a great drone video (starring Aquabelle)
"Evans head, much love to everyone and hope your all well and safe."
If you would like to help Lismore respond, please visit the Lismore flood page where you can donate (and also see all the prosaic details about sewage systems, asbestos removal etc.).
Disaster Recovery Updates - 2022
I have attached some photos of the max floods including the mooring rig (designed by Pegasus' rigger in CA Guy Stevens (my Alden ketch is moored in Berkeley) and installed by Scooter, Yamba-based rigger) that may be of interest to Ozzies puzzled like me by how to deal with concrete pilings and big tidal ranges. Many have improvised similar systems before; this was just an attempt to update to modern materials and so far, it has worked flawlessly.
Others also rode out the floods dodging bullets such as Ocean Alexander Mark 1 Isoquent. Brian may report on Brisbane river floods and the projectiles that hit his marina sinking boats nearby.
