Our second Incident Management Team in New South Wales
Our second rotation Incident Management Team sent to New South Wales was warmly welcomed at Sydney airport last Thursday by NSW Assistant Commissioner, State Emergency Services, Dean Storey.
The team will be assisting emergency services with the devastating flooding crisis, which is now in its 76th day and has a national and international multi-agency response. Our team has been working closely with a team from Singapore Civil Defence. You can see the affected areas of the state on this map(external link).
The team said they have ‘been impressed by the emergency services’ community-first approach - supported by organisational systems - which has helped to get the resources to where they need to get to quickly and efficiently’.
On Friday, they were arranging for a crew from The Project on Channel 10 to fly into an isolated town called Bedgerabong to film the community response there. A school principal was recently flown in by SES as the children there had not had a teacher for 10 weeks.
They were also ramping up public information efforts in Hillston, which is the next town in line for a peak in the height of the Lachlan River. It is not expected to breach the levee, but it is a new levee and there is a lot of anxiety in the community after seeing the level of flooding upstream in recent weeks.
The team is expecting a visit from NSW Minster of Emergency Services and Resilience, Steph Cooke, today.
Here are some more photos including one of Group Manager, Atila de Oliveira, cooking up breakfast for everyone on the barbie, and a Facebook post of the team arriving in Sydney. The team also produced this video with Southern Zone Operations Commander Ben Pickup https://fb.watch/h2SO3sWtQ6/(external link)
