Pressured truckies contribute to SES burden amid regional SA flooding

Flash flooding and damage due to wet weather events had a huge impact in northern parts of South Australia as tropical moisture descended in sporadic downpours during the Australia Day week. Road closures that persisted in Thursday were due, in one case, to truckies trying to make their way through flood waters, the SES told Flow listeners.

Ben Birbeck from the State Emergency Service's northern division based in Port Pirie told Flow on Thursday morning that emergency crews have been dispatched to deal with road damage and flooding:

“We’re currently experiencing some flooding on the middle of the Eyre Peninsula around the Cummins area, just as the rain from the last few days slowly makes its way through the creek system.”

“We currently have crews out dealing with that...we’ve still got a number of major roads that are cut off, particularly the Sturt Highway just north of Glendambo.”

As of early Thursday afternoon, the SES had an active flood advice issued for Cummins

due to localised flooding from the Peelina creek impacting parts of Cummins and surrounding areas. Warnings included the potential that water may be contaminated from septic treatment systems and that locals should avoid walking through water without protection.

The SES update comes after between 200-300mm of rainfall was recorded on the weekend across the Eyre Peninsula region.

As reported last week on Flownews24, an upper level low pressure system began moving over the west of SA and warnings were issued for local residents.

With torrential rain and localised flooding impacting areas on the Western side of the Eyre Peninsula, Streaky Bay residents saw 78mm of rain as the weather system moved in an eastward direction.

Birbeck reminded motorists that it isn’t worth risking their immediate safety and the prospect of a bogged vehicle just to pass through a flooded road:

“If the road is flooded, forget it, turnaround -as little as 15cm of moving water is enough to move a vehicle off of a road.”

“For those that drive four-wheel drives, it doesn’t take much more water, if the waters moving, to shift that car off the road.”

“There’s a couple of trucks that are currently stuck all around the state where they thought they would be able to get through on the road and have unfortunately either been pushed off the road or have misjudged where the road surface is and now they’ve ended up bogged in the middle of the floodwater.”

“That’s one of the contributing factors we have up on the blockage at Glendambo.”