This week marked the 60th anniversary of the 1955 Maitland flood.
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Chas Keys, a former deputy director general of the NSW SES and honorary associate of Risk Frontiers (Macquarie University), prepared a series of articles about Maitland and its ability to deal with flooding.
He looks at the city’s flood mitigation scheme.
Maitland’s flood mitigation scheme has been a boon to the community for decades. But there is one problem: the protection it provides has made people complacent about flooding.
Unfortunately the flood problem appears, to those who live in the built-up areas, to have been solved.
It is not widely appreciated that the mitigation scheme was not designed to keep out of the built-up areas floods of a scale not much larger than the 1971 flood and well short of the scale of the 1955 one.
The very success of the levees is a problem.
People in Lorn, South Maitland, Horseshoe Bend, the CBD, part of East Maitland and the streets between High
Street and the railway line have effectively been discouraged from ensuring that they are prepared for big floods.
The mindsets and skills that once helped people to protect their interests have been weakened.
Few current residents apart from the farmers have had significant practice in managing floods.
During the 1950s and earlier, the low-lying areas of Maitland were hives of activity as big floods approached.
Trucks and drays carted furniture to high ground off the floodplain, and people worked feverishly to raise belongings inside their houses.
Often items were lifted into ceiling cavities through extra-large manholes. But the people who were practised at those things have long since passed on or moved away.
For decades, this activity has not seemed necessary. As a result the organisational skills that were once ingrained in people have been eroded.
In 2007, when for a time it appeared that a flood might overtop the ring levee – the first line of defence for urban Maitland – it was noticeable that not everybody worked to protect their possessions.
The builders of levees rarely consider that the sense that they are failsafe – and this sense becomes stronger as flood after flood is kept out – is itself a problem. The limits of levees need to be clearly understood so those who live behind them know decisive action will be necessary when a genuinely big flood approaches.
People who live and work behind levees survive small and medium-sized floods without effort.
In Maitland’s case this means floods up to the size of the 1971 event.
Bigger floods are rare, but they should not be considered non-existent. Indeed they are inevitable. They will occur again, and people must understand what that means.
It means knowing how to protect items of value, whether by raising them or moving them to higher ground.
It also means understanding that evacuation will be necessary when a flood big enough to invade the built-up areas is approaching.
Acting appropriately on flood warnings, in other words heeding their messages, will trigger these responses and promote safety and the protection of property.
The State Emergency Service periodically expresses concern in the Mercury about flood complacency in Maitland.
Moreover, it has acted by developing programmes to help people understand what they should do in big floods.
Flood safety kits have been produced along with flood DVDs, efforts have been made to educate businesspeople about the flood management activities they will need to undertake to protect stock and records, and people have been urged to prepare flood plans to guide them when a flood threatens.
In effect, the SES seeks to replace lost flood experience with flood education.
We will know how effective this endeavour has been when the next big flood strikes Maitland.