What The Future Of Lismore Looks Like

In Lismore’s CBD where homes and businesses are built flood resilient and have never had water in them the 2022 floods changed everything.

During the first flood in late February, people described the night before like as if a rain bomb had dumped on their CBD or like a river was literally falling from the sky. The storm was unimaginably scary and it was life threatening and many homes that had never been flooded before were completely wiped out.

Now that the water has receded the scariest thing imaginable for locals is figuring out how or whether to rebuild again.

The Aftermath

“The displacement that has happened as a result of this event is somewhere in the vicinity of 10 to 12,000 people displaced from their homes,” Elly Bird, coordinator of Resilience Lismore and Lismore City Councillor told Junkee.

At this point Elly’s entire office is destroyed so we chat to her in a makeshift office she’s set up in an undercover carpark. She describes how dire it is in Lismore right now, that there’s no housing available for people who have lost their homes which has meant some people are cooped up with generous strangers, family or friends.

Resilience Lismore are urgently trying to get homes habitable because there’s no other long-term solution for the people who have been displaced.

“The response is incredibly frustrating. It’s a whole other level of bureaucracy that people have to go through to try and access any of that money,” she explained.

“People have to wait for hours on the whole listening to infuriating hold music. They jump through hoops with proving income, proving loss, proving expenses, providing receipts, and business grants.”

Elly points out that in some instances, people have to provide $50,000 worth of receipts before they can get any government money support.

“So you have to spend the money before you get it so the money is almost tokenistic because what we actually need is we need on ground support,” Elly said.

Community Providing The Ground Support

After being in Lismore for two days, it’s clear that community organisations are the ones providing the majority of support and relief on ground.

Some organisations are desperately trying to get partnerships with the government and as Elly describes it, it’s as if there is a brick wall that organisers keep running into when they try to work alongside them.

“The Red cross has been really great with their initial funding grants and Vinnies gave out something like 6 million. So the money is getting out but the bureaucracy and the processes particularly from the government are just it’s like a third disaster actually,” she told Junkee.

“The thing that we need to remember particularly with flood zones is that it is our most vulnerable people that live in those flood zones so it is our most vulnerable people who are on the front line of the impact of climate change.”

The Reality Of Recovery

Sue Higginson is an Environmental lawyer who’s worked on many climate change cases including when young people tried to sue the government over climate inaction. She has also recently become a Greens member.

She told Junkee that the big issue now as Lismore starts to recover is the thousands of thousands of displaced homeless people who can’t really afford to leave if they want too.

“What we need is a full adaptation plan with options for land swaps where people can leave the areas where people are able to manage their buildings and their homes to lift up and be above the probable maximum flood level,” Sue said.

We need the NSW government architect to put advice out immediately about what materials we should be using to rebuild in a flood resilient wave. We are not getting that advice and we know some of the materials that will be the better more resilient materials are more expensive than the cheaper materials,” Sue explained.

Elly wanted Junkee readers to try and think about the scale of what’s happened just in Lismore “the epicentre of a region wide disaster” by comparing it to two whole suburbs of Sydney being just completely wiped out.

Sue on the other hand wants people to recognise that Lismore is a climate frontier and that this is climate change like we’ve never seen it before.

“This community here we are the victims of the inaction of a government that has played evil wicked games with us. I’d even go that one step further and say that governments are responsible for this,” Sue said.

“There really is a responsibility that needs to be taken for the lack of action on climate change. Certainly Australia is not responsible for all of the climate change and extreme weather events that we are experiencing but it is responsible wholly for the fact that we are not prepared.”