There was some “absolutely foolish behaviour” amongst the Yass community regarding the floods last week, according to SES-Yass Unit Commander Rob Bolin.
“There were a couple of roads that my guys went out in a vehicle to check. While they were out there they did come across a few roads where there was water over the road.”
“At one crossing they parked across the road and had their red and blues on, while they were there blocking off the road because there was water on the road and it’s dangerous. There was a four wheel drive that came flying along and drove straight through the water and then abused my members for blocking the road.
“On top of that the same guy then egged on a little Barina to do the same thing as well, and she got to the other side, opened her door and a whole heap of water ran out,” said Rob.
Rob wanted to reiterate that while the SES volunteers are there to support you if something does go wrong, it makes their job far more complicated than it needs to be when people ignore their instructions.
“With a little Barina, all it needs is an inch or two over the road because it was flowing quite quickly, to be swept off that road and then it would have gone from my members trying to do the right thing and warn people not to drive across the road, to a flood rescue.”
“It was absolutely ridiculous that these people were taking risks like that driving through flooded water,” he said.
Rob Bolin
At another crossing, Yass Valley Council had put signs up and closed the road, but someone had moved the signage, leading to a potentially dangerous situation.
“They went to another crossing as well, where when they turned up somebody had moved the road closed signs that the Council had put out.”
“At that crossing they had a four wheel drive towing out somebody that had actually gone over the edge and into the water.”
“It doesn’t take much for you to end up in the drink, and depending on where it is, you could be gone,” he said.
Rob wanted to deliver two important messages to the community. One regarding the danger of driving in flooded waters, and one about the treatment of SES volunteers.
“This is an important message that we need to get across to the people of Yass. I don’t want to recover dead bodies, I don’t want to recover the bodies of residents. I don’t want them to do something absolutely ridiculous and die as a result.”
“The second message is that our members are there as volunteers, they don’t deserve abuse for trying to protect people’s lives,” he said.
Let’s hope next time people will be a little bit wiser and follow the direction of our SES volunteers.
Max O’Driscoll
