Cyclone Carlos started as a tropical low that swept through the Top End dropping a considerable amount of water with sub cyclonic winds. Wednesday 16 February it reached Darwin where it was upgraded to a Category 1 cyclone. This was a very slow moving system that hung around Darwin and Palmerston for quite some time before slowly heading south through the Darwin rural area, Batchelor, Adelaide River, Daly River and so on to the base of the Top End where it headed west to the coast and down to Western Australia.
Severe flooding was experienced in all these areas. Below are some photos and stories from our Bushfires NT volunteers.
Read accounts from some volunteer Bushfire Brigades involved with Cyclone Carlos: Dave's Story - Darwin River Volunteer Bushfire Brigade Peter's Story - Berry Springs Volunteer Bushfire Brigade Ray's Story - Cox Peninsula Volunteer Bushfire Brigade ... Frank Dunstan's notes:
Hearing these stories made me proud to be a volunteer fire fighter with Bushfires NT. The dedicated selfless work of our volunteers in times of trouble, not just during bushfires, makes them a credit to the organisation and to the community. Well done, we are proud of you all.
...
The experience on my property was that it felled more trees as a near miss tropical low heading north than it did as a direct hit tropical cyclone heading back south again. It also dropped more water in my area than I have seen in my 29 years residence and the Darwin River flooded to much higher levels than previously seen.
Reading these accounts it seems as though there was a fair bit of confusion and misinformation provided to the public by authorities in Darwin. In my area, Old Bynoe Road on the east side of the Darwin River, people were told by an NT News reporter on scene that water was being released from the dam and that people had to evacuate. At the same time ABC radio was reporting that the dam was overflowing, water was not being released and that there were no compulsory evacuation orders.
Our Volunteer Bushfire Brigades were regularly monitoring the Darwin River and local road conditions and reporting back to Bushfires NT in Batchelor. Bushfires NT also had a chopper carrying out aerial surveys. One assumes that all this information would have been passed on to Incident Command HQ in Darwin.
I reported local river levels to Dave Mullavey of Darwin River VBB, and was also rung twice by ABC radio for updates from my area.
From media reports the NTES/Police choppers were confused with the situation and couldn't tell the difference between houses, sheds and caravans from the air. Perhaps they should have utilised the extensive local knowledge in our Volunteer Bushfire Brigades.
|