Tamworth Regional Council will be sending a dozen outdoor workers and several pieces of heavy equipment over to Tweed Shire Council early tomorrow morning to help clean up the mess that Tropical Cyclone Alfred has left.
“I feel really proud that on behalf of our community in Tamworth, we’ve made an offer to a couple of councils on the coast that have been badly affected by flood and cyclone,” Mayor Russell Webb said at the Lockheed Street heavy vehicle depot.
“This is a contribution that we feel is something that we can do on behalf of our community.”
Twelve workers have left this morning, taking a backhoe, a skid steer loader, some excavators, and four trucks to haul it all over the Range to the Tweed Shire.
The workers going are all volunteers, Mayor Webb said.
“I’m very proud that the guys have put their hand up and said, Yeah, we’d like to go and we’d like to help our coastal cousin councils clean up.
“And if any of you have seen on television the amount of trees down around Tweed Heads, it’s absolutely amazing what that cyclone has done.
The offer of assistance has been extended to other councils on the coast, with Tamworth extending a hand to Lismore Council, who has been hit with flooding.
“The offer is there for Lismore, after they get the flood waters have gone down there, we will potentially end up helping them at some point in time,” Mayor Webb said.
Council’s decision to offer aid was made “as Alfred was coming in”, Mayor Webb said.
“(Manager of Operations) Murray Russell has organised all of this, all of the stuff, the accommodation, the comforts of home – but they’ll be working long days, and representing our community.
“It will be wet over there, they’ll probably be uncomfortable, but we’re sending a team over there.
“And I think our community should hold their head on and say we’re going to do what we can to support those on the coast in need, as they would support us if we were in need.”
Sending workers over to the coast means that serious danger for Tamworth has likely passed.
Tamworth’s contribution will only be machinery and manpower, with the financial cost covered by State and Commonwealth governments, not Tamworth ratepayers.
“It will be actually paid for by the natural disaster funding, so it’s not actually costing our community any money,” Mayor Webb said.
Under the new rules, Councils can now be paid for doing work in other areas for disaster relief.
“In the past, we weren’t able to do that, and now the natural disaster relief funding can support councils financially for offering that support.”
Speaking to the New England Times, a spokesperson for Tweed Shire Council said Tweed is glad for the assistance.
“We’re very grateful that other councils in NSW that aren’t so deeply affected can help out.
“We’ve got lots of trees down, flooded streets – the more help we can get, the better,” the spokesperson said.
Tweed Shire, including Murwillumbah, has been hit hard, but has been fortunate enough to have no major injuries or fatalities from TC Alfred. Much of the area was still recovering from the devastating floods in 2022.
“It takes a lot of resilience to go through all this again after three years.”
The initial period of assistance was going to be for a week, according to Russell Murray, TRC’s Manager Of Operations, but Tamworth intends to rotate workers in until the job’s done.
“At this stage, we’ve planned to send the twelve guys over for a week, and we figure that’s probably enough time away from their families in one hit.
“But we’ve actually had more staff stick their hand up, so we’re planning to swap them over with another 12 mid next week.
“We’ll just rotate them in a week at a time until Tweed doesn’t need us any more,” Russell said.
“All these guys just genuinely stuck their hands up and said they’d be happy to help.”
Top image: Council staff who have volunteered to go help clean up after the cyclone chat with Mayor Russell Webb and Manager of Operations Russell Murray. (Tom Plevey; New England Times)
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