NSW floods live updates: Mid North Coast emergency warnings, evacuation orders remain in place; four dead, more than 50,000 isolated

The NSW State Emergency Service estimates almost 10,000 properties have been affected by flooding this week.

NSW SES Acting Assistant Commissioner Allison Flaxman said the agency was moving into a “resupply and damage assessment” phase of the disaster.

“If you are isolated and in need of urgent resupply for items such as food and medication or transport to medical appointments, call NSW SES on 132 500 for a resupply request,” she said.

A couple stranded without food or water for days, a man with hypothermia and 70 aged care home residents are among the many flood rescues and evacuations that took place overnight.

As Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) and State Emergency Service (SES) crews worked tirelessly across the state’s north and mid-north coasts, an FRNSW team reached a couple and a puppy stranded for three days without food and water at a flooded Kempsey caravan park, before rescuing another person from a nearby hotel.

Another crew paddled roughly four kilometres to reach a man in his sixties who was suffering from hypothermia and was trapped on a property near Kempsey with a 32-year-old woman and their six dogs.

At Taree, 10 local firefighters, along with SES and Volunteer Rescue Association (VRA) teams, evacuated 70 seniors from a flooded retirement village and moved them to a nearby aged care home, an FRNSW spokesperson said in a statement.

In an effort to bring flood-affected residents desperately needed food and medical supplies, FRNSW has turned to remotely piloted aircraft and drones to carry out welfare checks.

In Kempsey’s main street, FRNSW has also installed a mobile water supply system, which it says is capable of pumping 5000 litres of water a minute from the flooded street back into the Macleay River.

Josh Hurst made sure his uniform was clean on Tuesday night. The 23-year-old was due to receive the NSW SES Young Volunteer of the Year award the next day at a ceremony at state headquarters.

Instead, he was woken by a 3.30am request from a superior. Could he deliver a specially equipped SES van to Taree, 4½ hours north, to help with the flood emergency? At 5am, Hurst was on the road, driving into the kind of weather that leaves nothing clean.

“I knew that things were deteriorating up there,” he told the Herald. “So to get that asset [the van] up to them was at the forefront of my mind.”

In Taree he went out on flood boats to perform reconnaissance and assist evacuations, working in “quite hectic” conditions. Footage from one rescue shows him receiving a bedraggled dog from the arms of a woman who had just been evacuated.

Hurst works as an electrician but estimates he spends 20 to 40 hours a week on SES work. First volunteering with the organisation at age 16, he has risen to become a deputy unit commander at Wollongong, south of Sydney.

Last year, he received several awards for courageous actions during the floods at Eugowra in the state’s central west.

After returning from Taree, Hurst spent Thursday and Friday helping his regular unit to deal with local fallout from the coastal trough as it moved south.

He admits to being a “bit bummed” about missing the award ceremony but hopes there will be another chance sometime soon to shake hands with his commissioner, Mike Wassing, and Emergency Services Minister Jihad Dib.

“I wasn’t too worried,” he said. “For me, operations come first.”

At the press conference just earlier, Minns was asked whether the government would implement a buyback scheme, as it had in earlier flooding events, for areas that had flooded multiple times.

This is what he said:

Look, I can’t promise that. We are going to work with the local community and the local mayor about resilience in the township. That’s hugely important, but I have to assess what the flood damage is, what the likely impact has been.

There’s been different programs that have been operating in the Northern Rivers, some have worked better than others, but I obviously don’t want to replicate a program that hasn’t delivered the kind of resilience that towns in the Northern Rivers had hoped for down there, and we need to make sure that whatever is approved for the Mid North Coast and the upper areas of the Hunter region works. That’s going to take a little bit of time … 

I’ve seen these programs – even with the best of intentions – be implemented and then not actually work or apply to just a small number of people. All the money runs out before it can actually make a difference in the community. And we’re determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past, given we’re having more and more of these natural disasters.

Premier Chris Minns has responded to allegations a police officer “guided” a woman into floodwaters before she died, acknowledging the family want answers, but saying he won’t “put the boot into a police officer” until more is known.

Pauline Fitzsimons, 60, died after a journey in convoy with a NSW police officer as they travelled from Dorrigo towards Coffs Harbour.

Assistant Commissioner David Waddell earlier told journalists that the officer told Fitzsimons he would not continue when they reached ankle-deep floodwaters as he was in a sedan and Fitzsimons was in a 4WD.

Waddell said they exchanged numbers and the officer told her to be cautious and not enter floodwaters, but 30 minutes later, Fitzsimons called to say she was in trouble in deeper floodwaters. A search was launched, and her body was recovered the next day.

In a statement to Nine News, Fitzsimons’ family criticised the officer for having “guided her into floodwaters and left her to her own devices”.

Minns said he understood their heartbreak and desire for answers, but that he was not prepared “to condemn the police or the police officer involved” until the completion of an investigation.

“When you’ve got a natural disaster and a heightened emergency with our emergency officers, including police, having to deal with hundreds of events, I’m just not going to do that today,” he said, adding that the family were “obviously going through a terrible, terrible time” but he was “not going to put the boot into a police officer at this point”.

The Pacific Highway, or M1, is due to reopen at 6pm tonight.

Jenny Aitchison, the member for Maitland, said the key route would reopen with a single lane of traffic in either direction.

“The amount of garbage and debris that is on the roadway from the floods is extensive,” she said. “Transport crews have been working relentlessly to try and clean it up, but they’ll only be able to open one lane, and there’ll be removal happening in that other lane. So we need people to really comply with those restrictions of the safety of the workers.”

Good afternoon, Anthony Segaert with you here for the rest of the day’s coverage of the historic flooding event in NSW.

Premier Chris Minns is in Maitland this afternoon and just gave an update on the situation.

Here are things as they stand just after 2pm:

• The weather system causing the storms has moved on, and most of the affected areas have blue skies today.
• There are at least 15 towns, mostly on the state’s Mid North Coast, that are isolated due to floodwaters.
• 24 emergency warnings are still in place. “Look at your [Hazards Near Me] app rather than the sky before making a decision,” Minns said.
• As authorities move into the clean-up phase, they are concerned about the risk of road slippages and landslides as a result of the water movement.
• There have been more than 600 flood rescues over the past few days.
• Minns ended his comments by thanking emergency services: “We would have had hundreds of deaths if it wasn’t for the bravery, the courage, of emergency service workers. In the last 72 hours, they’ve been incredible in the circumstances. But we need them. We would be in huge trouble without them.”