FORTY minutes - that's how long it took for water to begin threatening homes in Goodnight after the discovery of a broken levee bank.
RFS flood coordinator Danny Andrews told The Guardian he and his crew were sandbagging a home on Wanera Lane last week when they made the alarming realisation.
“As we were sandbagging the house, one of my group leaders had gone down to a levee bank and shot a level across and realised that it was probably about a 1.5m wall of water coming our way,” Mr Andrews said.
“So we basically set an evacuation order on the house, and we managed to get the fridge, freezer, and other goods out of the house, and by the time we got all of that loaded there was water lapping at our feet.
“That’s how quick it came across - 40 minutes.
“It’s insane, it really is, I didn’t think the water would come up as quick as what it did.”
While the residents of the evacuated home were found emergency accommodation, it did understandably leave Mr Andrews and his crew feeling a little on edge.
“That was freaking me out a little bit so we ended up going down and shoring up a couple more houses that are down along that levee bank line just to make sure, and since then there have been no other house impacts,” he said.
“But there is seeping levee banks all the way through Goodnight, so it is a huge risk at the moment, and it is something that we are monitoring every day.”
Mr Andrews believes the priority at the moment for Goodnight is ensuring that Lockhart Road, which is the main road in and out of the area, does not become impassable.
“Goodnight is a town that has one road out and one road in apart from a wet weather road that you can’t get up at the moment anyway because there is too much water on it,” he said.
“If that gets severed then we are isolated, so all efforts are going to go into preventing that.
“We are at the stage now that that the temporary levee is being cut by the wind and the waves because it is coming up so high and it has got limited freeboard on there, so we are having to get that redone and widened and thickened up so it can handle it, so then we don’t lose services and we don’t get isolated.
“We just don’t want to be cut off.”
Mr Andrews said there was a day during the week where water levels actually dropped, but it still quite hard to predict what is going to happen with so much water trying to flow down through the Wakool Junction.
“We’re finding that every day is a little bit different depending on how the Wakool is flowing, but it is still flowing at 166,000 megalitres a day, versus the 30,000 that the Murray is flowing,” Mr Andrews said.
“It is meant to peak on the weekend at 12m, whether it gets there or not I am unsure, but that’s what the reports are. If it gets to 12m we will get that backing back effect again.”
And with no reprieve from the water in sight in the near future, locals like Mr Andrews are beginning to tire, but will not give up.
“Physically I am starting to wear thin a little bit, but you have just got to keep on keeping on for the community – I’m not going to stop until everyone is safe and until all of this threat is over and we can go back to normal,” Mr Andrews said.