I am having a rest day after spending 3 days at Tea Gardens & Hawks Nest with the SES. They copped huge winds & torrential rain & there are trees & limbs down everywhere,.
Power is slowly being reconnected but some houses have to be disconnected before we could cut trees & limbs off them, Essential Energy has teams there working there freckles off to try to restore the power.
Part of the problem with the Internet has come from these storms.
Many people have no phone service either so many of the Requests For Assistance have come from those able to make their way to the forward command post to make their requests verbally. At least one old lady I met was unable to get her car out of the garage because the electric roller door controller wasn't working due to no power & too frightened to manually disconnect the opener for fear of stuffing it up.
SES crews are coming from near & far, next port of call for those from the north of the State are heading to The Hunter today & tomorrow, 2 of my team members are stumping up again for Newcastle but had to take 24 hours off before being re-deployed- they have more energy then me. I was busy on a chainsaw & a polesaw for 2&1/2 days.
Access to some communities is only achieved after crews cut their way through trees blocking the roads, some were only just being accessed yesterday because they had no way to contact the outside world to tell us of their plights due to no phone service- land line or mobile, no electricity & blocked roads.
If you are having problems from the storms, please be patient, the Emergency Services are doing their best to get to you as soon as they can. In the meantime, if you can help yourself & your neighbours, you will be better off much sooner.
Please though, think of safety, I am hearing of many chainsaw operators in bare feet & thongs with no hearing or eye protection, wearing shorts & generally ignoring all safety rules. As we are told in the SES, if you get hurt yourself, you cannot help either yourself or anyone else & only become a burden on the already overrun Emergency Services!
It is a bit hard to get you to Hospital if the roads are blocked & the average Ambulance crews have some difficulty dealing with limb amputations so look after yourselves.
Another thing too, If your house or shed or driveway is not affected by fallen trees or you are worried that trees leaning on other trees may knock them down with no risk to life or dwellings, we are the State EMERGENCY Service, not the State GARDENING Service! Our role is to save lives & effect TEMPORARY repairs to property, not to save you money getting rid of trees from your yards! (Sorry about the rant but some people don't seem to want to understand that.)
We are very largely Volunteers, though we are trained to save lives & do so safely & we will help as much as we can but we still have to earn our incomes & look after our families while we look after yours.
