The AFAC National Resource Sharing Center (NRSC) was activated on Saturday 20 March 2021 to assist the New South Wales State Emergency Service (NSW SES) with coordinated interstate assistance with flood and severe weather operations.
This has been the largest flood and storm deployment coordinated by NRSC, with a total of 342 interstate personnel deployed into NSW.
Incident management personnel
AFAC NRSC had a Deployment Manager and a Management Support Officer embedded within the NSW SES State Control Centre (SCC) in Wollongong, along with supporting Jurisdictional Liaison Officers (JLO), supported by NRSC in Melbourne.
These resources were located across NSW from Grafton to Moruya along the coast
Interstate personnel were principally from Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Australian Capital Territory, with offers of support received by AFAC NRSC from Western Australia and Tasmania. Deployed personnel included swift water rescue technicians, flood boat rescue crews, storm damage crews, and incident management personnel. These resources were located across NSW from Grafton to Moruya along the coast and inland at areas surrounding Tamworth and Moree.
Rapid damage assessments
In response to the COVID situation in Brisbane which began over the weekend of 27-28 March, NSW SES established a taskforce including planning and work health and safety with NSW Health, AFAC NRSC, and QLD JLO to manage the situation. NRSC worked with the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) and NSW SES to understand if any personnel deployed into NSW fell within the areas of concern and corresponding dates.
As rainfall eased and river levels dropped, the transition to recovery commenced with a major focus on rapid damage assessments and flood intelligence gathering. Most resources were demobilized early over the weekend of 27-28 and continued throughout the following week, with the last crew demobilized on 30th April.
