I have just come back from Ballina where I was part of a contingent from the Sydney Southern Region of the State Emergency Service. We were the second task force to be dispatched to the area after strong winds and torrential rain had lashed the area over the previous week. As the rain moved down the coast it was evident that the SES would be needed and so the first task force was in place before the storm even hit. Heavy rain fell as far south as Kempsey and many places along the coast were flooded.
We flew in to Coolangatta on the Sunday where the previous teams were waiting with our vehicles. Most of these people went back to Sydney, but some stayed on for a second turn.
We drove to Ballina, found our accommodation and that was it for the day. There was some minor flooding along the way, but there were many trees that had been blown over.
We reported for duty at Ballina SES on Monday morning and were given our tasks. There were just over 50 jobs and ten teams to do them.
Our first job was a house that had roof damage on a veranda and in what looked like a granny flat. We tarped the granny flat, but the absence of a few panels on the veranda was not going to lead to any more damage so we left it.
The next job was to take us most of the day. A large tree had fallen onto a house and it was a very twisty tree with multiple trunks. We did as much as we could with the normal chain-saws and then started on the higher branches with a pole saw. The pole saw started to sound a bit weird and we discovered that there was no chain oil getting to the chain. We tried to repair it, but we couldn’t get it to work so we arranged for another pole saw. While that was happening we went to lunch where we found out that we would be going home the next day. Apparently all the jobs would be finished that day and our services were not required.
We returned to the tree job with the new pole saw but it still took about two hours to finish. It was a little disappointing that we couldn’t do more, but we had done our bit to fix Ballina and the locals were grateful for that.
All that remained was to get the Randwick truck back to Randwick. The relatively new truck had its fuel tank shorted to fit in the equipment bays on the back. The fuel gauge has not been adjusted to suit and so the tank is empty when it still shows 1/4 full. This is a bit of a worry and gives the truck a range of less than 400 km. The road to Grafton was closed by floods and the Pacific Highway was also closed at Kempsey. This meant driving out along the Bruxner Highway to Tenterfield and coming home down the New England Highway. With numerous road works and 40kmh zones it took 13 hours to get home.
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