Stories from the storm that flooded homes and washed away roads in Albany and Denmark

Georgia Scott was listening to the wind and rain lash Albany from the comfort of her home office when she got a text message from a neighbour. Curiously, the neighbour was asking if her house had flooded. “I opened my office door and looked at my front door and I don’t know how but it was like these king waves were just coming through the door,” she said. “It ended up getting about 15 to 20cm-high inside.” Ms Scott, who lives with her pet dogs and cat on Radiata Drive in McKail, was one of many Albany residents quickly realising that this was no normal storm. “I had to call my brother and they had to break in through the front window because the water was so high that they physically couldn’t open the front door,” she said. “My dogs were practically swimming through the house. “I called my mum and she said to put down towels and I was like, ‘Mum, I think it is a little bit past that’.” The Bureau of Meteorology recorded 50mm in 12 hours at its Albany Regional Airport weather station overnight on Sunday, but further south in McKail, some residents had 130mm in two hours. While Ms Scott was desperately trying to sweep water out of her house, fellow McKail resident Reuben Dekker had lost his driveway. Situated at the end of Pyungoorup Place, Mr Dekker was powerless to stop the water. “The whole road was a river, it ran straight over and went straight through,” he said. “It was like a tidal wave coming through. All the front yard is gone.” He hopped on an excavator and did his best, seeing the lighter side of his efforts to thwart Mother Nature. “It was quite good fun. I don’t think I need to reticulate my lawn for a bit,” he said. “You’ve always got to have something funny in life and have a good laugh.” The weather bureau issued a severe weather warning for Albany at 7.21pm but by then, homes were already taking on water and cars were stranded in floodwaters. Wind gusts of 100km/h were starting to bring down trees and cause structural damage from Albany to Denmark. Uprooted trees had left some homes without power and others without water due to damaged water mains. Duty forecaster Noel Puzey said the bureau predicted wet and windy conditions a week in advance but not the severity of the storm over Albany and Denmark. “It is a very localised, heavy fall over Albany which has unfortunately caused the damage through there,” he said. “That is difficult to forecast ahead of time.” In Yakamia, Warwick Meyer was watching Formula One when he heard a loud bang. To his surprise, he found a metal pole sticking through a wardrobe in his house. It was only when he went outside to investigate that he realised it was the leg of a neighbour’s trampoline which had gone through his roof and speared into his house. Closer to the coast in Port Albany, Taman Cassidy and her two children, Adah and Felix, had sought refuge in their neighbour’s house. Taman’s husband, Ben, left work and headed for home about 8pm. “Taman had been in the lounge room and felt the walls start to shake, so she moved into the bedroom and that’s when all hell broke loose,” Mr Cassidy said. “She heard all the banging and crashing and came out into the kitchen and said, ‘yeah, it’s time to go’. “She’s a very independent woman and did so well. “The dogs and the children and everyone is safe, that’s the main thing. “It’s poor Adah’s birthday today — she’ll certainly remember it.” The “banging and crashing” was the roof being ripped from their lovingly designed family home on Burgoyne Road. Most of their roof landed in a yard across the road. The family are staying in a motel until they can make other arrangements. “It must have been a freak squall that came at the right angle and just nailed it,” Mr Cassidy said. “The main thing now is to get it preserved to stop more rain getting in.” As emergency services rushed to respond to the most urgent calls for assistance, yachts were tipping off their stands and breaking their moorings at Princess Royal Sailing Club. PRSC vice-commodore Harold Keay spent the night calling boat owners and trying to limit damage. “Me and an owner of a catamaran were sitting here and it was probably about 60 knots (111km/h),” Mr Keay said. “I reckon it was stronger than cyclone Alby and I was here when that blew. “The sailing club has one broken window ... a broken flagpole. Half a dozen boats have got holes in them, snapped poles and snapped rings.” His yacht Shagabull tipped over on land with its broken mast alone worth about $50,000. In Denmark, where the bureau recorded more than 100mm on Sunday night, the Denmark River broke its banks. An excavator was tasked with opening the Wilson Inlet yesterday to relieve some of the pressure. Arguably the most significant damage of the storm was on the main roads between Albany and Denmark. Many roads in the two towns were closed at different stages of the night and into the morning but in most cases they were reopened once the floodwater subsided. However South Coast Highway and Lower Denmark Road remained closed yesterday, with Main Roads crews assessing the damage. Photos appeared to show a section of Lower Denmark Road had given way, while South Coast Highway also had surface issues. Albany State Emergency Services volunteers were called out to more than 160 storm-related jobs, with plenty of work ahead of them by yesterday afternoon. Teams from Perth and the South West were being deployed to bolster their ranks. “We would just like to urge the public to have some patience,” Albany SES deputy incident controller Nathan Anderson said. “We are working through (the jobs) as fast as we can on a high-to-low priority system and as we get more jobs in, those incidents change as to what their priority may be.” Mr Anderson said to his knowledge, it had been at least a decade since they had dealt with damage on this scale. “We are dealing with everything from complete roofs ripped off to flooding to pulling cars out of ditches,” he said. “There are a wide range of tasks we are doing at the moment. “We weren’t expecting any of this kind of widespread damage last night. “We got the first call in around 6pm and I activated a team and within about 10 minutes the guys said they had about three or four more jobs and in the five minutes it took for me to drive from my house to the building we had over 30 calls on the books. It escalated rather quickly.” Albany and Denmark woke to count the cost of the storm, with more than 15,000 homes without power. The National Anzac Centre had roof damage and waste stations at Redmond and Wellstead were out of action because of the storm. Damage to the railway line at Cuthbert had forced the cancellation of trains. The City of Albany urged people to stay at home if possible. Clean-up crews are hard at work and conditions still pose risks. Albany mayor Dennis Wellington was on a flight to Albany on Sunday night when the plane had to be turned around. He remembers hanging onto the chair in front of him as the plane shook violently during its aborted descent into Albany. “The take-off was pretty good, the whole flight down there was pretty good until they said we are just starting to descend,” Mr Wellington said. “They both did a fantastic job, the two young pilots that were in charge, and took us up again and headed back to Perth.” Back in Perth, Mr Wellington hit the road and drove to Albany, arriving in the early hours of the morning. The clean-up operation will go on for days around Albany and Denmark but most importantly, there have been no reports of serious injuries. “It has been a little bit devastating in terms of the amount of damage that has been done,” Mr Wellington said. “While there is a reasonable amount, it is not insurmountable.”