‘We don’t need the army. We need the navy’: I saw the flood destruction. Where was our government?

I’d been covering the Catholic hospital in Lismore for the first couple of days of the floods. With many other doctors cut off, we’d been treating patients offloaded from boats.

As the floods worsened the next day, a colleague and I offered to volunteer at one of the two major evacuation centres in Lismore only to find they were well-staffed. Many of the volunteer medics there had lost their homes or clinics but kept working. I hitched a ride there in a JetRanger helicopter. Knowing I was of little use without medical supplies, I signed out as much as I could think of from a local base hospital. And, with help from a medical student, packed it on the chopper.Looking down from above, it was nothing but brown water and debris as far as the eye could see. It was like Vietnam’s Mekong Delta but with fewer boats.

They were working in a room filled with human misery. As a medical student, I had spent three months in a trauma hospital in Vietnam. Needless to say, that was better equipped than Coraki last week.For the next two days and nights, I only napped on a bed requisitioned from a “state of the art” health facility disabled by lack of power and planning.We treated locals whose feet looked like bags of mince. We patched up rescuers so they could get back on boats. Oldies had run out of medicine.

Until I was relieved after a couple of days, we didn’t see an additional NSW or Defence Force doctor or nurse. I got home on Saturday to find a letter from my six-year-old daughter, written while I was away. “Dad, don’t want you to go.” She wrote she was “wuryd”.

juliepower Thank you Dr Cam Hollows…“The real disaster has been the failed response”, writes Cam Hollows… “ask what the government has done with the money it has already taken from you in taxes.' FederalICAC

juliepower AWOL I’d say

juliepower What happens to climate scientists spending billions of funding on latest equipment such as early detection and modelling.yet they couldn't come up with early warning. Dam management is rubbish. They should have lower dam level as soon as they got the focus.

juliepower We need nuclear weapons

juliepower Hey Lismore, this has been coming for many years, many scientists were warned, yet nothing was done to prepare or mitigate. Below your voting over those wasted years.

juliepower The Morrison plan was always to have a small government that did nothing. It has succeeded.

juliepower Army Navy Airforce= ADF and Peter Dutton is the fall guy there. Slow off the mark eg ADF without any other services like police etc. has 64 helicopters at their disposal. However many are air worthy, a fair percentage of those should have been active within hours. Slack at top.

juliepower Scomo is here 👏

juliepower I blame the sky..........its not being friendly

juliepower When your insurance premiums are unaffordable because you live in a flood zone there's a clue.

juliepower ScottytheFailure

juliepower The Government was high and dry and smug!!!

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