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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-11-23 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

RIVERLAND STORM DAMAGE

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (15:16): I rise to grieve on the storm damage that ravaged the Riverland and the river corridor on 9 and 10 November when we were last sitting here. The damage that properties and the region experienced over those two days was extensive, particularly down at Morgan and at Waikerie. Just to demonstrate some of the ferocity that those areas endured, the four one-inch mooring ropes on houseboats all snapped. There were houseboats floating, almost sailing, down the river. At Waikerie 200-year-old trees were snapped off at the base. They were not actually blown over, they were snapped off, such was the ferocity of the storm.

As I travelled through the Waikerie district, down at Sunlands and Ramco on the Friday after a week of sitting here, it was a stark reminder of what natural disaster can really do to a small country region. The community assets that were damaged were significant, particularly some of the town's buildings, the town's institutes and churches. Almost every building was impacted on in some way, shape or form. Driving through the regions, I saw whole roofs that had been removed from a building and were a full block away. Timber structures had been driven through front windows of offices and buildings. It really was a remarkable outcome that no one died and there were no serious injuries throughout the storm.

Remember that that storm went over two days. Of course, there are significant horticultural properties down there, particularly at Waikerie and Sunlands, and the damage caused to some of the properties was horrendous. The ground was just a sea of produce: soft fruits, stone fruits, avocados. It really was very sad to see that the growers had spent all season producing that fruit just to have it smashed and hit the ground.

The forecast was that there would be about a 20 per cent loss up in the region. Some businesses received very little damage and sadly some businesses were totally wiped out. That has been absolutely devastating for some of those family businesses, and in particular some of the new businesses down at Waikerie, such as those growing hybrid vegetable crops using world-leading technology. For instance, capsicum and some of those softer vegetables are being grown on trellis, under shade, with drip irrigation, using cutting-edge technology of fertigation. To see it all just blown away and absolutely wiped off the earth was quite heartbreaking.

There were 13,000 homes and businesses without power over the duration of those two days, and of course that has had an impact on some of the businesses that rely on their freezers, fridges, lights and power to be on, so that they can actually operate a business. This really has put them at a significant economic disadvantage. I think the majority of the damage was caused by trees falling onto powerlines. Wherever I drove, there were powerlines on the ground with trees lying over the top of them, so it really did black out the whole district.

There was a piggery at Taylorville that was completely destroyed, and 12,000 pigs had to be relocated. A lot of those pigs were giving birth—I am not quite sure how we talk about pigs, but they were pregnant and they were popping them out—but there was nowhere to pop them, so there was a huge amount of death.

Just responding to the other side of it, ETSA's response was widely regarded as their largest regional response in the history of ETSA, so I think it was a credit to ETSA to have the manpower on the ground to get out there and deal with the power outages. It looks as though the Loxton Waikerie council will be out of pocket to the amount of around $200,000. Again, I would like to think that I can speak to the Treasurer and ask him to perhaps loosen his purse strings—

The SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

Mr WHETSTONE: —just in response to that freak weather event. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Time expired.

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