January 30, 2013
Relieved Yarraman residents say the town has been spared a repeat of the damage suffered in the 2011 floods.
Two years ago several Yarraman businesses experienced significant flood damage and at one point there were also fears the town could run out of food.
This time around, though, the Timber Town appears to have been treated more kindly.
As was the case in 2011, major flooding in the town centred around Yarraman Creek.
But according to Susan Reilly, whose Emmert Street house adjoins the creek, things were nowhere as bad as they were two years ago.
“On January 10-11 in 2011 water was lapping the top step below our landing and 750mm flowed at speed right under our house in the middle of the night,” she said.
“But last Sunday we only had about 50mm. And because the creek doesn’t have a very large catchment, we didn’t have to worry about a big rush of water following on later.”
Today Susan and her husband Scott, who are Secretary and President of the recently incorporated Friends Of The Yarraman Creek community group, had a working bee at the creek with fellow member Val Page to inspect damage from Sunday’s flood.
They found that while there have been some loss of revegetation plantings, most of the group’s work was intact.
“I think we fared very, very well,” Susan said,
“We were lucky that (ex-cyclone) Oswald didn’t stall over this part of the South Burnett.
“But our thoughts naturally go out to those who are suffering up the eastern seaboard – especially the farmers. Their stock and crop losses must be overwhelming.”
Jeff Thomson, from Jetson Engineering, also fared much better this time around.
Two years ago his business was flooded twice – once on the Sunday night (900mm) and then again the following night (1.8m).
He had no forewarning of the flash flooding and lost office records, filing cabinets and computers in the deluge, as well as a week’s production while the business cleaned up and found its feet again.
This time, Jeff said he’d had enough warning to move everything out of harm’s way before the rains hit.
And while a small amount of floodwater still passed through the business, it was much less than two years ago and there were no losses this time around.
Yarraman Stockfeeds also escaped flooding.
Two years ago the business had water in its premises and had to close for a day while flood-hit stockfeed was cleared out.
But this time there was no flooding, no goods lost and no downtime.
“We had about nine and a half inches of rain on Sunday,” Josh Lean said.
“But it didn’t cause us any problems except getting to and from Nanango for a while.”
The same applied to Yarraman’s IGA Supermarket.
In 2011 it was hit by flooding and staff worked around the clock to mop up in the pre-dawn hours so the store could open on time.
But in 2013 there wasn’t any water in the store and the main problem was a small shortage of fresh produce caused by road closures, Kelly Cadell told southburnett.com.au.
However all shortage problems were solved today and trading was continuing as usual.
“I think our town did pretty well overall,” she said.
(Photo: Susan Reilly)
