Lismore campus to house temporary accommodation for flood-affected residents

They started collecting people off roofs, out of boats, helicopters. We would have every 15 to 30 minutes Blackhawk helicopters landing on the Morrie Ryan rugby oval dropping people off.

The campus was in complete blackout and there was very very patchy mobile connectivity. So we had little sense of what was happening.

We had up to a thousand people here it's just it was this multifaceted approach to the response that involved not only looking after evacuees and housing their primary needs of you know food, water and power, balancing that off the response and what we needed to help to provide to the ADF, the police and the ambulance. You were sort of trying to wear multiple hats at one time.

And we very quickly agreed that our response to the questions would be yes and then we'd work out what that meant afterwards. For the university, so it was just an enormous task to get that mobilized and get that happening and then all the logistics around that so you know Salvation Army was doing a thousand meals a day um then doing breakfasts and lunch so just the logistics around that all of the donations that came into the university.

We've had an outpouring of different regions come here and donate their products and goods for us to distribute out to the community, some are even flood affected that have been given so many donations themselves which is really really inspiring.

As a kid I grew up in uh I was born in Weewa and the floods drove us out in 74 I think it was and my family were affected by floods when I was a child so it holds strong to me so yeah. People don't want to sit on their hands and don't want to be doing nothing and they will do anything to help, they don't care if it's scrubbing down mud or if it's doing deliveries or if it's just picking up boxes and throwing things around I've really seen that genuine community spirit.

I just trawled Facebook for addresses that were popping up that needed help. When you first walk in you can't ignore the smell, that's the first thing that you notice and then it kind of just clicks in that this is someone's life this is their reality we started there with a team of students and then we just didn't stop. The adrenaline takes over and you just go and go you don't even think twice about it.

Yeah it's quite shocking it's um just seeing people with the whole world's possessions destroyed on the sidewalk so it's quite confronting but we're yeah we're just trying our best to do what we can to help them even if it's just a chat to reassure them or you know we've ripped up floorboards pulled up linos, separated garbage, yeah everyone's sort of working together and you know just pitching in because everyone just wants to help the community and help people get on with their lives.

All the people who've been volunteering day in and day out have just been truly amazing and the amount of donations coming in is also quite unreal I mean I actually over the last couple of weeks I've found the whole thing quite emotional in so many ways how people come together how people you know support each other even under really difficult circumstances and also how resilient our staff have been.

You know we've turned over pretty much every single square metre of space that we have on the Lismore campus to become a springboard for the recovery of Lismore and the region the fact that we've got we've got a police station on campus we've got three schools we've got a business recovery hub, the public recovery hub, we've got a health precinct standing up health and medical services that are currently unavailable in the town because pretty much every medical centre in Lismore has been wiped out.We've got professional services operating out of the campus um so that people can have their court hearings so people can see their children you know and get some sense of movement and productivity again. All of that has happened because the University said yes first and foremost.

Like the rest of the CBD and north and south Lismore my business was literally up to the ceiling. Business NSW, in partnership with SCU is setting up this business hub. We have hot desks, we will be running Q&A sessions for insurance, for commercial tenancies, for the landlords for the tenants. There's a lot of very traumatized people in town but really the focus here is to actually get businesses up and running as soon as we can and to find out what businesses need to be able to do that. I don't know where we would do this if the University wasn't here.

So we had a total of eight classrooms on the third floor that did not have water in them. The rest of the entire two campuses were inundated.

It's wonderful to be here at Southern Cross University in wonderful facilities working with wonderful staff from the university to keep the education journey happening and alive for our students. Oh I think we all had a sense of relief just to know that we do have a place to be able to come together and still learn. It's really great to just even see everyone and be around people that are going through things and we can really lean on each other.

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