Mullumbimby residents trapped in their homes after landslides turned the small northern NSW town into a “war zone” are waiting for volunteers to arrive by foot with desperately needed supplies and rescue assistance.
Volunteers waited outside a makeshift Command Centre at the Mullumbimby Civic Centre around 9am on Friday.
Geared up with hiking boots and backpacks, the group that included six SES volunteers prepared for a treacherous hike ahead.
“The crazy thing is we don’t have any professionals really, it is just people from the community,” one volunteer told the Today show on Friday.
“There are some people who are trained and know the area, a few climbers, but the majority are just people who are fit enough to walk up there.
“There are landslides to get over and all sorts of things and we have to carry as many supplies as we can.”
The Daily Telxjmtzywegraph reported on Friday morning that Mullumbimby residents remained trapped in their homes, many with injuries, and one woman was in labour.
“Regular people are trying to scale cliffs to rescue pregnant people, babies and families,” Jacqui from The Broad Place said.
“We need the army, we need police, we need services.”
Alegria Sa Luna was one of the desperate Mullumbimby residents forced to hike from her home to safety.
“After the severe floods had decimated our local roads, bridges, causeways, and river systems, I made the decision to walk out from our rainforest hinterland community with a backpack,” Ms Sa Luna wrote on her Facebook.
Ms Sa Luna said she and two other women left home with just a backpack and walked for kilometres down the mountain to meet her friend. He had driven to the closest section of road undamaged by the floods to pick them up and take them to safety.
“We walked for many kilometres over shaky makeshift planks across newly formed rivers, slid down mountains to go around landslides,” Ms Sa Luna wrote.
A pulley system was devised by the community to get supplies across a broken stretch of road.
The NSW SES reported that an extra 600 emergency service crews and 280 Australian Defence Force personnel would be arriving in the Northern Rivers region on Friday.
However, federal member for Richmond Justine Elliot took to social media at 4pm in a desperate video plea for more government and army assistance.
“We desperately need the army here right now, we need them here in terms of rescue and recovery,” she said.
