Storm leaves Denmark relatively unharmed

Shire of Denmark president Ceinwen Gearon says the town is counting itself lucky after emerging from Sunday night’s storm relatively unscathed compared to Albany. Despite a similar level of rainfall to Albany — where homes were flooded and roads damaged — Cr Gearon said Denmark had sustained “relatively little damage”. “We are very lucky. Lucky to have a community that is so amenable to heeding our precautions, and lucky that for whatever reason we didn’t see the issues that the City of Albany has seen,” Cr Gearon said. With heavy rain and winds gusting up to 100km/h on Sunday night, thousands of Albany homes were left without power. Cr Gearon said while Denmark received more than 150mm of rain in 24 hours, the Denmark River was helpful in preventing damage. “It was quite shocking to see those images yesterday morning of what had occurred in Albany, and clearly we had similar levels of rain,” Cr Gearon said. “But to a certain extent, the inlet acts as a sink for all that water — everything piles into it. “When the inlet overflows, we’re not seeing rivers of water, we’re seeing water lapping over the edges. So it doesn’t have that movement that causes some of the damage that you’ve seen in the infrastructure in the City of Albany.” The Shire of Denmark opened the Wilson Inlet about midday on Monday to avoid serious flooding along Ocean Beach Road, after the Denmark River broke its banks on Sunday night. McLeod Road is still affected, and people are advised to travel with caution in the area. “As far as we can see ... the majority of affected houses from Sunday night, and affected businesses and residents, have had their power restored,” Cr Gearon said. “Clearly there’s still some cleaning up going on, but essentially now we’re mopping things up rather than having any significant damage that requires significant work. “We just wanted to say to the people in Albany that we’re sorry that they’ve had to suffer through this significant interruption to their day-to-day living, and hopefully they will be resolved soon.”