The Central Coast received an enormous amount of rain last week, over 200mm in some areas in the space of 24 hours! While the impact wasn’t as major as floods in the recent past and has now eased, it does once again raise some real safety concerns.

The SES message, as always, is not to drive through flood waters over roads, and yet we unfortunately still saw that happen. It is never safe to drive through water over the road, even at shallow depths hazards are not visible.  Flooded roads also need to be inspected to assess as to structure underneath before they can be reopened. It was disappointing that some members of the community felt it okay to verbally abuse Council staff doing their jobs at road closures. It goes without saying that this is not acceptable – our crews are also members of the community and are there to keep people safe.  

During the weather event, Council also opened five coastal lagoons over four days, to help with water flow. In February, in readiness for possible flooding, we also excavated some 60,000 tonnes of sand at The Entrance. This enabled us to open a second channel on Saturday 6 April when the water level hit the minor flood level of 0.9 metres to allow water flow at low tide. Since then, we have been monitoring the flow, and the channel has been re-excavated prior to each daytime low tide as required.

With the school holidays now about to start, I urge everyone to keep safe and enjoy this fabulous environment we have on the Central Coast.

Rik Hart, Administrator