Message from the Mayor_Flooding Appreciation

I wanted to reach out to express my appreciation as Mayor to the amazing community of the Moree Plains.

I would like to honour our community members, our true heroes, who have had to endure, and restore their homes after the flood waters inundated their homes after Moree suffered serious flooding on Friday 21 October 2022.

As my first flood event since becoming Mayor, I felt so supported, guided, and assured throughout the process, however, we still have a lot of work to be done, we still have residents isolated and our road network is highly compromised.

Working closely with our Member for Northern Tablelands, Adam Marshall MP, throughout the flooding event we have both strongly advocated for assistance for our impacted business owners and primary producers and residents.

We have seen the Premier of New South Wales, Dominic Perrottet and Steph Cooke, Minister for Flood Recovery of New South Wales, come to Moree to assess the damage from the flood event.

The Premier announced he had written directly to the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese requesting his agreement on increased disaster assistance to catapult the shire into a category D level.

We are still awaiting the news on whether the Commonwealth has agreed to change us from a category C to D.

The Governor General of Australia, His Excellency the Honourable David Hurley and his wife, Her Excellency Mrs. Linda Hurley flew to Moree this week to spend time and speak with community members regarding the flood impact, response and progress of the flood recovery.

As of 9 November 2022, 2930 assessments had been undertaken in Moree revealing; Impact Summary Structures damaged 1,266 Slight damage - 876 Moderate damage - 264 Severe damage - 111 Destroyed – 15

We had over 200 volunteers and personnel, assisting people to clean up their properties, our local streets, and public spaces and helping with aerial food resupply operations.

A big thank you goes to NSW SES, Fire and Rescue NSW, NSW Police Force, NSW Rural Fire Service and Australian Defence Force personnel, together with our MPSC Team.

Can I also make mention of the support of our Trans4M Rail, GrainCorp and countless other organisations and individuals who in the great Australian way gave countless hours of assistance.

We have been fortunate to have Resilience NSW with leading agencies set up in the Ballroom of the Max Centre this week to support our residents with face-to-face recovery assistance for flood-affected community members, who will lend further support to outlying community members as flood waters continue to recede.

While the township of Moree has received widespread assistance, we know we are not entirely over the flood event, we still have many residents isolated, farmers who have sustained serious impact on their crops and harvesting schedules and a huge task ahead of us to rebuild and repair our road network to aid farmers through harvest.

We live in a Shire where floods occur, however, we can never prepare for the devastation to property that occurs and the personal scars that are left.

As Mayor, my memories of this flood will be different from those in the past. This flood gave me a different perspective, one that has completely reinforced to me what an amazing community we live in. A community that has had its differences but one that comes together when the need is there.

This is a wonderful community and I have never had more pride in it than I have had in the last couple of weeks.

Thanks once again to all our helpers and our thoughts to those who have been impacted.

Mayor Mark Johnson.