Emergency services from across the country converged in Metford last week to provide one of the most extensive flood responses the city has even seen.
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NSW SES Hunter unit, and its branches in Maitland and Port Stephens led the response to last week's flood and were supported by SES volunteers in Newcastle, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria.
Queensland Fire and Emergency Services volunteers, NSW Parks and Wildlife, NSW Rural Fire Service, Surf Life Saving NSW, NSW Ambulance, the Australian Defence Force, VRA Rescue NSW and NSW Resilience staff also assisted.
The multi-agency response ensured that if a worst-case scenario unfolded in the Hunter - like it had in northern NSW - emergency services would be equipped to quickly respond.
"The Metford Incident Control Centre was going 24/7, we had people here constantly doing the planning, grabbing the intelligence, supporting people and then there was the catering to feed everyone here as well," NSW SES Deputy Incident Controller Northern Zone Inspector Jamal Box said.
"Even though we didn't see the river levels that we could have seen, and we're happy about that, and the rain that we had was less than predicted and gave us a bit of a blessing, we had so many people here in the Hunter who were ready to provide support."
Volunteers made more than 30 rescues during the flood and one third were motorists who had driven into floodwater and become stuck, or people who had decided to go swimming in the rising water and had found themselves in trouble.
Maitland and Cessnock Local Government Areas last week joined 56 LGAs across NSW that have been declared natural disaster areas. Hinton residents in Port Stephens LGA are still waiting to see if they will be included.