Inside the flood zone — how dinghies and community spirit are keeping people and animals safe near Albany

Homes are still flooded in low-lying areas south of Lower Denmark Road where communities are banding together to protect people and livestock. The freak storm that left Albany and Denmark with a lengthy clean-up on Monday morning has had a devastating impact on residents from Cuthbert to Youngs Siding. Kathy Kviesitis lives on Woodides Road in Elleker, and was one of many forced to evacuate her home on Tuesday with floodwaters yet to drain away. Yesterday, she said she was still unable to return home, her house completely surrounded by water. “Our property is completely under water still, it is only a tiny bit of the house pad that is left,” she said. “There is water lapping at the foundation. “The water is so high at our house it has blocked up our septics, pumps are under water so we have no fresh water and can’t shower or use the toilet. “It is waist-deep in areas ... this is the worst it has ever been.” Ms Kviesitis and her partner Colin Glazbrook were evacuated by boat by a neighbour — the only way off their property. “We have a dinghy without a motor, we were going to row it but the people down the road came down to check on us with their boat and they took us out,” she said. “He also grabbed our neighbours. The boys will go back and check again today to see if it has gone down a bit, but we have booked the hotel for the week.” Her carport, one of the only parts of her property not underwater, has become a refuge for her animals. Mr Glazbrook said he had been overwhelmed by the community spirit shown by those on Woodides Road, with locals phoning each other and checking in on each other. “Our chook pens went under water so we have 20 chooks in there trying to find somewhere to roost,” she said. “It came up so quick. The sheep are all in there too — eight ewes, of which four are heavily pregnant, a ram and three lambs. “The boys went out Tuesday night and got in the dinghy and delivered hay to the sheep in the carport because they had no feed. “I didn’t care about us and the house; it was the animals which have nowhere to go and so vulnerable.” She said some people had not been as lucky as them — the flooding had stayed out of their house. “A lady around the corner had a foot of water in her house,” she said. “When they went to abandon ship the water just gushed in.” Mr Glazbrook spent more than four hours in chest-deep water hauling sheep into a dinghy and towing the boat by hand to save his sheep and those of his neighbours. He said nearly all of the 12 or so properties along the road had been inundated with metre-high floodwaters. “We have never seen anything like this before,” he said. “We have been so busy rescuing sheep, we have been chest-deep in water trying to lift sheep into a boat to ferry them to higher ground,” he said. “It was really horrible, it was three or four hours chest-deep in freezing water to try and save them. “We were just dragging the boat along and it was 500m to put them at higher ground.” One of those was Rohan Shirley, who first set out in his dinghy on Sunday night. He was taking his boat up and down Woodides Road doing welfare checks late Monday night, when he found a neighbour named Pam shivering in her home. He took Pam to a neighbour’s house on higher ground, and the next morning rescued another local called Derry and his dog, taking them to another neighbour’s house. Jodie Lloyd, who lives in the Elleker townsite, said water levels were still rising on Monday. “It’s not so much still raining, but we are all still rising,” Ms Lloyd said. “Once the lake fills up, everyone’s water levels keep rising.” Ms Lloyd’s children remained home from school with the journey into Albany almost impossible because of floodwaters and road damage. “My house is all right because we have four dams and they are full, but where we are building down the road, you need a boat to get there,” she said. “With Lower Denmark Road and South Coast Highway shut we couldn’t get anywhere.” At Youngs Siding, potato growers and sheep farmers Justine and Chris Ayres were forced to evacuate about 25 sheep to higher ground after finding them stranded on a bank. They used a dinghy to get around the farm and were devastated to find about 150 sheep dead and 50 shivering on a bank, with water rising, and others in the branches of trees. “When we first got out there I was just in shock, I was in disbelief, and was a bit teary seeing how many had died and were floating in the water,” Ms Ayres said. Life was made a little easier for those communities when South Coast Highway was reopened yesterday. The storm caused extensive damage to fruit and vegetable farms on the south coast, and made a soaking wet start to the grain-growing season even wetter. Grain Industry Association of WA crop report author Michael Lamond said some farmers in the Albany area had sections of paddocks “completely washed away”. He said waterlogging was starting to be a “substantial” issue in the Albany area. “This extra rain we have had is going to have a substantial effect on the final yield due to a loss of crop and waterlogging,” he said. “We have not had something like this for a while. “Crops underwater for a certain amount of time cannot recover.”