Tweed Heads team continues to serve Northern Rivers communities

Daryl Crowden is the Salvation Army Emergency Services General Manager who has been overseeing operations in South East Queensland and the Northern Rivers region of NSW. (File photo)

BY LAUREN MARTIN

Salvation Army Emergency Services (SAES) teams remain active in many areas across the Northern Rivers region of NSW, even though some evacuation centres have closed as the floodwaters start to recede.

One such centre that continues to cater to the community is Tweed Heads, where Corps Officer Major Nicole Viles has been serving since last week.

“Thank goodness the floods are not as high as expected, so many people are starting to relocate back to their homes where it is safe to do so,” Nicole said this morning.

“However, parts of the Tweed Valley, electricity is still out, and it could be three to four days before it is restored. So, for those people, particularly vulnerable people like the elderly, they will need to remain in some kind of refuge, be it an evacuation centre or motel until power is restored.”

Salvation Army teams, like Nicole’s, have operated in tough situations to assist local communities in need, facing power and communication outages.

Norm Archer, Response Coordinator for the SAES NSW/ACT, working at the SAES mobile truck in the NSW Northern Rivers region yesterday.

Some local SAES volunteers were unable to assist because of the danger in travelling to evacuation centres or the need to remain at home to secure their own properties. Despite these challenges, Nicole said she has seen God at work.

“We had a provision of ‘Meals on Wheels’ meals donated just at the right time, when all the supplies we could get started to run low,” she said. “The fact that this area has not flooded the way that it should have flooded … all of that is God at work.”

A generous donation from a northern NSW branch of ‘Meals on Wheels’ to The Salvation Army in Tweed Heads enabled hundreds of meals to be served at local evacuation centres.

The Tweed Salvation Army Corps building itself is surrounded by trees, with a playground adjacent. Nicole said it is remarkable that none of the trees bordering the corps property fell during the cyclone, yet in the park next door, nearly every tree has fallen.

“Our centre was protected,” she said.

Across northern NSW, since the start of the emergency, more than 4000 meals have been served in 18 evacuation centres from Kempsey in the south to Tweed Heads in the north. Communities have rallied to assist the Salvos to serve, with chefs from local clubs, and a catering team from Southern Cross University assisting at evacuation centres in Lismore.

In other places, Salvation Army personnel aren’t on site but are providing food and coordinating the response, working with other not-for-profit organisations or agencies.

High winds in the Tweed Heads region brought down many trees.

Relief in Lismore

Lismore Corps Officer Major Phil Sutcliffe noted that, although community members had more time to prepare for this emergency, stress levels were significantly higher than in previous events, as many in the area are still recovering from the record-breaking floods of 2022 that caused extensive damage.

“In Lismore, there is a huge sense of relief that the river didn’t peak,” he said. “Our biggest issue is that this has brought up a whole fresh sense of trauma from 2022 and that will be our continued ongoing work after the evacuation centres close – to support communities to get back to normality.”

The Salvation Army’s SAES National Response Manager, Major Bindy Lupis, stated that some recovery hubs would be established by Thursday, if not sooner, to assist people in getting back on their feet.

To donate to The Salvation Army’s Cyclone Alfred Appeal, click here. You can also donate at Woolworths, both in-store and online.