Thousands of people in Sydney’s south and south-west have been told to leave as flood warnings are in place for vast swathes of NSW. Follow all the day’s news
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ABC RN host Patricia Karvelas:
Premier, can you guarantee people who lost their homes to these floods, that they will be able to rebuild where they are, or will some be forced to move to less flood-prone areas?
Well, Patricia, I’ll work through that because I mean, obviously this was an unpredicted, freak catastrophe. I mean, there’s a 14 and a half metre flood and Lismore!
But ultimately, in these times, we need to have frank assessments of the circumstances.
Again, I don’t mean to be rude, but you say “freak”, is it really a “freak” if we’re being told we’re going to have more of these events more frequently?
Should we be really describing it that way when we know that these events are going to be with us more often.
We’ve never seen a 14 and a half metre flood in Lismore I’m sure you have that. There’s no doubt that we are seeing more of these events and we need to make sure that as we rebuild, we do so in such a way that ensures that we protect people’s lives and we have communities built in a way where we mitigate flood risk of fire risk.
It’s a sign of the bushfires as well. So as we get to that rebuilding phase, we’ll certainly look at better planning and more flood mitigation and fire mitigation as we move through
It’s going to continue to be a very difficult week …
We expect torrential conditions to continue … overnight, we had 80 flood rescues in the areas of Western Sydney and Wollongong.