Weekend floods are a difficult thing, however it was great to see local government working together with emergency services, with much support from outside the area recently that hopefully reduced the workload.
My experience as a landholder representative on the ‘Carroll to Boggabri Rural Floodplain Management Plan’ for a few years from 2003, had some alarming statistics presented.
While recently two, medium-to-small floods, almost three weeks apart, is a test on everybody’s mental health and business, especially with all the infomation at people’s fingertips, emails, web sites, and social media, etc. The recent early August flood at about 8.44 metres, had approximately 137,000 megalitres per day peak flow passing Gunnedah. Last weekend’s flood had 41,544 ML per day.
What is it going to be like when floods of last century return? The peak height in 1971 was 8.98 metres, some 500mm higher than recent events, but alarmingly the river was at or near peak height for three weeks straight, flowing at a peak of 401,585 ML per day. Then there are the mid 1950s floods when in February 1955, 800,030 ML per day was passing Gunnedah at 9.6-metre depth at the Gunnedah gauge – 1.3 metres higher than recently.
Back in 1864 a “probable” 9.85 metre flood occurred – 1.55 metres higher than what we just experienced earlier this month.
These events when they return will more than test the resilience of locals and agencies. Consideration of these facts is what we all should be planning for in our daily lives.
Geoff Hood, Gunnedah
