A father and son who almost perished in the 2015 April superstorm have become the face of the NSW SES’s latest flood awareness campaign.
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Peter and Michael Manuel could have drowned on their Nelsons Plains farm when they tried to move their cattle to higher ground among rapidly rising water and torrential rain.
Mr Manuel was left clinging to a tree as flood water raged around him. He was fatigued and suffering hypothermia and told his son he “could not go on”.
Michael, who was 15 at the time, wouldn’t leave his father and managed to swim him home to safety.
The traumatic event has left Mr Manuel eternally grateful that his son was a strong swimmer, but now he wants to help spread the message about the dangers of flood water.
The social media campaign, which features experiences with flood water in other areas, aims to make people think twice about putting their lives at risk.
NSW SES community engagement senior project officer Samantha Karmel said people needed to think about the implications before they found their path blocked with water.
“We want them to think about what can happen when people drive through flood water,” she said.
The SES worked with University of Newcastle students to film and edit the video series.
“It got bigger than we thought it would,” Ms Karmel said.
Ms Karmel said Mr Manuel’s touching experience would entice landholders across the state to be aware.
“Peter’s message is all about planning ahead and since the storm happened he’s always brought the cattle up a lot earlier, he’s learnt from the experience,” she said.
“In the April storm people were often going into the water to try to save their pets – to a lot of people their pets are like humans – and they ended up needing to be rescued.”
Mr Manuel, who has been farming all of his life, told Fairfax Media after the storm that he had no idea his property could flood so quickly.
Read about his chilling brush with death here and his reflections on it a year later.
Remember how the 2015 April superstorm unfolded.