When a natural disaster hit our region

If you’ve seen the news over the last week, you may have heard something about “Lismore” and “flood”.

See, last Thursday (Only the day after I filmed that beautiful blue sky down in Ballina) constant rain hit the Northern Rivers, thanks to ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie, which had earlier hit northern Queensland.

In one day, we received so much rainfall that evacuation orders began being put into place. It was clear we were going to flood. Badly.

The Wilsons River at Lismore peaked at 11.6m at around midday Friday, however the high tide that peaked in the early hours of Saturday morning caused that number to rise.

Levels peaked above the 1974 level, but below the 1954 level – at least in Lismore. Because some areas of the Northern Rivers flooded worse than the 1974 flood, you may hear conflicting reports of whether this was the worst flood since 1974/1954.

Every single business in the CBD of Lismore was submerged by up to 3.5m of water after the Wilsons River broke its levee bank.

Homes in the CBD, North, South and East Lismore were inundated with water.

If you were really unlucky, both your home and your business copped damage.

See video above for a snippet of the panic in town that I filmed on the Friday as our town began going under.