‘Mud keeps pouring out of the walls’: Thousands of people in flood-affected northern NSW still without a home

Val and Neil Dyke are not sure when they and their three teenage sons can move back home. 

Their house is among more than 3,000 affected by floodwaters that raged through Lismore last week, peaking 2 metres above the town’s last record flood.

“Mud keeps pouring out of the walls; it’s tough going,” Neil Dyke said of the clean-up effort.

“The house seems fairly structural at the moment but the floors are probably going to give out because there’s a lot of chipboard.”

Ms Dyke said they would keep at it each day until they could move back in.

“We’re trying to keep it together. You need to have a roof over your head,” she said.

There are currently 270 people still staying in Lismore’s two evacuation centres, with thousands of others relying on family and friends and sleeping in spare bedrooms, caravans and garages.

And it is not just in Lismore, with the impact on homes across the Northern Rivers region still being counted and assessed.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet yesterday said the government was “working through issues” with those who “have lost their homes or have been temporarily relocated”, but fell short of announcing any specific measures.

Today, Prime Minister Scott Morrison will declare a national emergency in response to the floods and is expected to visit Lismore.

The declaration gives the federal government power to intervene and deploy resources.

Mr Dyke said the government needed “to fund [flood-affected] families directly, not just things in general”.

NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Mal Lanyon was announced as the Northern NSW Recovery Coordinator late yesterday but was not available to speak to the ABC.

The Dyke family were grateful to be staying with nearby family. Ms Dyke said they were “surviving” but the situation was not sustainable.

“Everybody’s awesome but everyone just needs their own life back so we just need to get into our own home,” she said.

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Despite what the family had been through, there was no doubt they wanted to stay.

“We live here because we can’t afford to live on the hill,” Mr Dyke said.

“But it’s an awesome community. My dad has been living here for 63 years.”

Making a bad problem worse

The day before the flood hit, the Country Women’s Association (CWA) Lismore branch group had started a new initiative cooking meals for homeless women.

“Many of whom are over 50 or 60, and women living in their cars with their kids,” evening branch president Kerry Harvey said.

“It’s gotten so bad over the past couple of years we knew we had to do something.”

She said she had “no idea” if those women and children were safe and the flooding had made the situation “so much worse”.

Ms Harvey teared up as she recalled the people who lost their homes.

The Lismore CWA is turning its efforts to helping with the clean-up but not from its century-old club building, which was no match for the flood.

“The water came over the levee like a hurricane and smashed into the building, knocked out the east wall and went over the building,” Ms Harvey said.

Ms Harvey said it was among many local organisations and businesses now looking to relocate out of the flood zone.

“Who wants to go back into that knowing that it’s going to happen in another couple of years?”

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