Yass Hospital’s roof struggled to cope with the recent deluge.
“We were called to the Yass Hospital who discovered a fair number of leaks in their roof.”
“We had about ten people up there with the help from the Harden guys as well to tarp a significant portion of the roof,” said Rob Bolin, Yass SES Unit Commander.
Yass Soldiers Memorial Hall is also back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons with Yass & District Historical Society President Cheryl Mongan leaving no doubt as to its poor state of repair, giving this description of escalating issues since October storms last year.
‘In the past fortnight, there have been two further incidents. Luckily volunteers have been in the building when this occurred and were able to mitigate any real damage.
The last incident occurred on 23 March when three of the rooms we occupy had water running down the walls and in several places onto boxed collections. We had to move shelves and boxes of records, bookcase and all equipment away from the walls.
With water running onto light fittings the electricity was turned off and we were told to leave the building until further notice.
Wherever possible things have been covered in plastic—the archives are beginning to look like a Christo art installation! It was a week before we could access the archives again.’
In comparison to the rest of the state, however, Yass got “lucky” as much of NSW flooded last week, according to SES Yass Unit Commander Rob Bolin.
Whilst it was undoubtedly a nervous week for the SES with weather threatening, Yass was fortunate to come through relatively unscathed.
“Fortunately, us here in Yass have been spared the brunt of all the nasty weather,” he said.
The SES had a busy week, constantly monitoring the environment and deliberating over the safety of various areas.
“We were certainly watching the weather, making preparations, ensuring we had sufficient members in town.”
“We opened up the unit on Tuesday so that people could come down and help themselves to sandbags.”
“We went through most of the sand we got in,” he said.
Some members of Yass’ SES team were sent to help out in Sydney.
“We did have a flood rescue team deployed up near Sydney in Picton.”
“We had a couple of in-water rescue technicians and a flood boat operator that went up for a couple of days.”
“They did a couple of flood rescues while they were up there, I believe,” he said.
SES Yass has been interested in adding more volunteers to the team for some time, with the scare of last week highlighting that need.
“Due to a lot of our members working during the day, we didn’t have a huge amount of members available to help fill the sandbags.”
“It’s better to be prepared than not to be prepared and get washed out,” he said.
The SES Yass Unit had an open night on Tuesday. If you missed the session and are interested in joining the team as a volunteer, reach out to the NSW SES Yass Unit Facebook Page.
Max O’Driscoll
What are you missing? To access every story in each weekly edition of the Yass Valley Times as an easy to use digital flip newspaper, please subscribe and support Yass Valley’s independent newspaper.