Massive flooding in Kimba district, – the Agricultural (no it’s now the Nuclear Waste) Town of the Year.

Flooding in Kimba district causes a decade’s worth of damage and communities are ‘completely shut off’

ABC North and West SA / By Declan Gooch, Brooke Neindorf, and Marcus Wilson, 23 Jan 22, V

Flooding on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula has caused “massive, massive damage” to roads and infrastructure and left communities completely isolated.

Key points:

• Some parts of the Kimba district received 300mm of rain over the weekend
• The mayor says there has been “massive” damage to infrastructure
• A local farmer says his property looks like “channel country”

The Kimba district was among the hardest hit by the weekend’s destructive rain, which battered most of regional South Australia.

Mayor Dean Johnson said some areas received up to 300mm throughout Friday and Saturday.

The Bureau of Meteorology said the 160mm officially recorded in the 24 hours to 9am on Saturday was the most rain in a day ever documented there.

“It’s done massive, massive damage to our roads and general infrastructure,” Cr Johnson said.

“It will be some years and perhaps even a decade before we get to repair all of this, I think.”

“There are entire roads and sections of roads that have just been swept away by rivers of water. I can’t paint a much better picture than that. Just cliff edges where there used to be a road.”

He said many of the roads that had been damaged or destroyed were major roads, and the Kimba district was cut off from most directions.

“We’re completely shut off from the rest of the world at the moment. The road to the airport has completely washed away,” Cr Johnson said.

It is one of several regions that have been isolated by floodwater, with authorities scrambling to repair the Olympic Dam Highway that has cut off access to Roxby Downs.

‘You can mistake us for being in channel country at the moment’

Buckleboo, about 30 kilometres from Kimba, was another of the hardest-hit areas and also received its most rain ever recorded in a day.

Local farmer Tristan Baldock said his property had been transformed.

“You can mistake us for being in channel country at the moment, so we’ve got a historic watercourse that’s probably extending 20 kilometres through our property with a series of lagoons,” Mr Baldock said. ……

Will get through’

Cr Johnson said he was confident the region would recover. “The Agricultural Town of the Year is set up for a pretty good growing season next year, I think.”
more https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-24/kimba-floods-eyre-peninsula-damage-isolated-roads-closed/100777084#:~:text=%22It’s%20done%20massive%2C%20massive%20damage,infrastructure%2C%22%20Cr%20Johnson%20said.&text=He%20said%20many%20of%20the,the%20world%20at%20the%20moment.

January 25, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, Federal nuclear waste dump