Another spell of rain in the Hunter has not caused any more flooding in the Maitland region.
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An east coast low that formed north of Noosa late last week caused widespread damage and flooding in south-east Queensland and on the NSW north coast on the weekend.
The low pressure system was similar to the conditions that have left pools of floodwater across the Hunter for almost a fortnight.
About 60mm of rain was recorded at Tocal on Friday and Saturday after the State Emergency Service issued a flood watch for the Paterson and Williams rivers catchment areas.
But the SES withdrew the warning yesterday morning.
A spokeswoman told the Mercury that the weekend’s rain did not significantly top up floodwater in Maitland or surrounding towns.
“We’ve had about 20 new calls, but nothing more significant than a few trees down in yards and leaking roofs,” she said.
“There has been a little bit of rain, but the weather is supposed to improve again [on Monday].”
More than 300mm of rain fell in the Maitland area in a 24-hour period when the east coast low hit the Hunter last month.
Floodwater has remained at high levels in Maitland since then and some people feared that the second east coast low would cause more flooding in the Hunter.
Meanwhile, about 500 SES volunteers from South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania have joined volunteers from across NSW to help attend the backlog of calls for help in the Hunter that have accumulated in the past fortnight.
SES incident controller Amanda Williamson said volunteers had seen to about three quarters of the 7760 calls for help in the Hunter since the super storm hit.
“We’re taking a very deliberate approach to finalising outstanding jobs for the Hunter community,” she said.
“We’re centralising all our volunteers into one taskforce to complete jobs within specific geographic areas, getting the jobs done, and then moving onto the next area.
“It’s a big push to get these outstanding requests attended to and get our volunteers, who’ve done an amazing job so far, back safely to their home locations.
“We can’t thank them enough, and we can’t thank the community enough for their patience, resilience and assistance during these storms.”
