Transcription of an Interview with Ray Nicholls on Monday 28 February 2011

                   Ray is Captain of Cox Peninsula Volunteer Bushfire Brigade

“Basically we started on Monday the 14^th of February ... we got heaps and heaps of rain over home and people were complaining their drains were blocked, so we cleared a couple of them – then it rained all night, it really pelted down.

“Tuesday we went out and did a road patrol on Cox Peninsula Road all the way to Pioneer Creek. All floodways were flooded, but were still passable. Pioneer Creek was just up to the level of the bridge, but nothing going over. Everything was good. Tuesday about lunchtime the wind really picked up in excess of 100km per hour, and then we got inundated with phone calls of trees across the road everywhere all around the community (Wagait Beach), trees across the road all along Cox Pen Road, so we started out in full operation rounding up the crew and trying to clean all these trees. We did the community first where most people couldn’t get in or out of their houses. We cleaned all them up and then went out along Cox Pen Road, cleaned all that up and we got to Pioneer Creek and there were trees jammed up on the bridge at Pioneer Creek, actually on the road itself and impassable to all traffic and completely blocked off.

“Wednesday morning we got out with our chainsaws and we started a very hectic, busy day. Before that, we had no actual damage reported in the community ... there were two tanks that was all we had, two water tanks – trees had fallen across and completely smashed the tanks, but no structural damage. Wednesday we got out on the chainsaws all day, then Wednesday afternoon/evening about 5 o’clock we got a call from Emergency Services to do a house to house check of who was going to go to the cyclone shelter and who was staying at home, so we did all that. That finished around 6.30 on the Wednesday.

“Thursday we were out again ... on Wednesday night we got more big winds, and yes again it knocked more trees down, so we cleaned them up, and then we got ... Rob Knight was apparently travelling back home from Darwin to check his property and he reported that there were several trees down across the road again at Cox Pen Road, so we went out again, cleaned all those up, and at that stage Pioneer Creek was still flooded, but it was passable.

“We pulled one lady out of a floodway. She’d hit the water too fast and sort of aquaplaned. She was very lucky she just went over the side, but we pulled her out ok – she had shopping on board. So we pulled her out which was good and she went back on her way.

“Thursday and Friday people started coming back from Darwin, back home and they found trees on their roofs and we finished up we lost two sheds, two caravans and several houses had trees on their roofs, but there was no actual damage to the houses themselves, which was really good. On Friday afternoon, all day Saturday and the Sunday we were out cleaning up the mess of the dwellings, all the trees around the place. People were getting bogged in their own driveways, they couldn’t go anywhere.

“Also, we had communication problems. On the Tuesday afternoon we lost all power – around 1.30 all power went out and then later on in the afternoon we had no telephone communications, so we were virtually isolated so far as communication goes. We had Bushfires radio for a while ‘til Channel 2 went flat, so we lost that, and yes, we started using Channel 8 for a little bit, and then Channel 2 came back on line Thursday, I think it was. Power itself, over home we didn’t get back ‘til 5, 10 pm on Friday night, so we were virtually four days without power and of course, people were complaining that they couldn’t go to the shop to get money out to ... there was no EFTPOS and all that sort of stuff. The ferries weren’t running, so we were isolated then. People couldn’t get anything out and ...”

There was a comment here by the interviewer about there being plenty of warning with this tropical low that turned into Cyclone Carlos and that everybody should have been well prepared.

“No-one prepared for it, that’s right.

“Rhonda and myself, we had a tree on our house, or two trees, but they stayed there for four days while we cleaned up everybody else’s yard and that for them, but we were lucky there was no actual structural damage, but we lost our satellite dish for the internet, we have no internet or anything. It’s still broke at the moment, so I don’t know when they’re coming out to fix that. But, apart from that everything’s good, there’s no injuries reported to anyone, everyone was safe. They just complained that they couldn’t get any money or anything like that.

“At Belyuen the road was completely washed out. It was showing 300 mils on the depth indicators, but the road was washed out underneath, so it finished up about four feet (about 1.2m) altogether, so to look at the gauge on the road you think, “oh yeah, it’s passable”, but a big washout in the middle.

“Monday last week the ice man from Darwin came over because Belyuen had no ice, the hotel had no ice, the shop had almost run out of ice, so he came over with a full load of ice and went to go through Belyuen and yeah, he went straight down, so he stuffed things up breaking his axle. We had three vehicles out there pulling him out, trying to get him out. Plus a backhoe, we got him out.

“Then on the Tuesday after that we had a Trans Territory Food truck coming out with more supplies for the shops at Belyuen and Wagait Beach, and once again, he got stuck. But he was lucky – he sort of realised ... as soon as he hit it he realised he shouldn’t have done it so he didn’t go right in and he was an easy pull out, thank God. At Belyuen the water’s gone, but it’s still like a pigs’ wallow sort of thing, it’s very sloppy. They have got a load limit now; they’ve put some gravel on top of it, but there’s a load limit now ‘til they fully repair it – four or five tonne, I think it is, nothing over five tonne is the load limit.

“And yeah, everything else is done around the community. We’ve finally got since last Tuesday afternoon, actually we’ve started to get the trees off the roof at home and cleaned all that up in our own yard.”

A comment was made here by the interviewer about Ray and Rhonda selflessly putting the community first and only cleaning up their own home after they had worked on everybody else’s clean-up and other problems.

”I was the only one with a chainsaw ticket, so I was flat out for three days – I was just cleaning up everyone’s mess around the place. The tree damage was unbelievable – there were just trees everywhere, and they weren’t just little trees, they were big buggers, they were big ones. But like I said, we were very lucky – the only real damage was the two water tanks and the one shed; a tree went right through the shed, but that was the only major loss. Everything else was absolutely fine. We were busy from the Tuesday morning when things really started to flood up right up ‘til the following Sunday, so it was five, six days we were pretty near flat out.

“It was a week later when we actually got the trees off our roof because I knew there was no roof damage so we didn’t really worry about it. Yeah, we cleaned up all around the community. NTES, they finished up giving us a hand, too. That was on the Thursday and the Friday – they gave us a bit of a hand because, like I said, my back was killing me on chain sawing. Yeah, they came and gave us a bit of a hand.

“We were very lucky, there was no real structural damage and of course, nobody had any injuries. We did have a medivac, but that was a lady from Belyuen. We couldn’t take her over by road because you couldn’t get through anywhere. They ended up sending the Care Flight chopper, they ended up picking her up.

“We were virtually too busy to even look after our own [place].”

...

After the interview Ray mentioned that he had forgotten about three downed power lines that made his job potentially more hazardous.

Interviewer was Frank Dunstan