Parts of town in Boorowa flooded on Saturday. Image supplied by; NSW Harden SES Unit.

The NSW SES Harden United was called out to Boorowa in the early hours of Saturday morning to help evacuate residents who had been inundated by the floods caused by the recent heavy and consistent rains.

Garry Buckley from the Harden SES Unit explained the details of their task on Saturday morning.

“The Harden SES Unit received a phone call about 3am on Saturday morning saying that the water was rising on the Boorowa River,” Gary said.

“We sent a crew of two people out to drive around.

As that was happening, we got a phone call saying that the white alert had gone off on the Boorowa weir.

The team then went looking around and found a male in a residence in Market Street that had to be evacuated for the water inundation in his house.

“While they were doing that, the amber alert also went off on the Boorowa weir, so the guys went down to the Caravan Park.

We activated a flood rescue for the people in the Caravan Park.

We were unsure how many people were there at time. “Once our crew went in and found out how many people were, we called off the flood rescue and our team members just got the people out of the caravans they were in.

“Most people were asleep, they didn’t realise the water was coming up. We had assistance from the NSW Police to do that as well.

“As our teams drove around, we also had a sandbag job. By 9am on Saturday morning the water had started to recede.”

Despite no rain for the last few days, there is still quite a bit of water lying around and roads are closed in and around the Boorowa area.

Jugiong also received a large influx of rain over the past week, with the area very susceptible to regular flooding.

“We have also sent a crew member down to Jugiong to check on the state of things down there.

There’s been no problems just yet, the water is just across the road from the Jugiong Motor Inn,” Garry continued. “We’ve seen it drop a bit this week.

NSW Water is taking their releases down to 90,000 megalitres, it was up to 100,000 megalitres on Sunday. We have one crew going down once a day to check everything’s all right.”

The Harden SES Unit has particular advice for local residents for the upcoming season. “We’re updating people on our Facebook page. If anyone needs assistance dial 132 500.

A big thank you to the NSW Police Force because they were exceptionally helpful under circumstances. Also, a thanks to Hilltops Council, as well to our team members who were up so early helping out.

“It is forecasted to be a very wet spring and summer due to the La Nina weather pattern. The grounds are already waterlogged, so any heavy rains we have now will just run off.

Some advice to people is; if it’s flooded, forget it. Don’t drive in water. “We’re always recruiting. If anyone can see themselves in Orange, give us a yell.

We’re a fun team, sometimes it’s serious but a lot of the time it’s fun.”

Tim Warren