LSA Justin Heath escorts Angie and Jack Webber away from a Sea King helicopter which had evacuated them from flood bound Stuarts Point. Picture: LSPH Damian Pawlenko

Six RAN helicopters dashed from Nowra to the north coast of NSW last week to help evacuate hundreds of residents isolated by rising flood waters.

Three Seahawks and three Sea Kings were tasked to collect residents from parks and paddocks at Smithtown, Gladstone and Mount Seaview near Kempsey and fly them to safety.

"At the moment we have 'Shark 7' (the Sea King from SUCCESS) taking 42 residents...7 at a time...from the Mount Seaview Retirement Resort, across the flooded river to a waiting bus," CMDR Andrew Whittaker, the Defence aviation resources coordinator on the ground in Kempsey said.

The Smithtown and Mount Seaview evacuations were just one of several tasks for the pilots, crew and maintainers of 816 and 817 Squadrons.

CMDR Whittaker said "in the first hours Tiger 84 ( Seahawk) went to South West Rocks to fly a woman with severe abdominal pains and gastric to the local hospital.

Later a Seahhawk flew two sick people from Gladestone to Port Macquarie Hospital,

This was followed by the retrieval of a resident who needed maintenance on a heart pacemaker.

The following day Sea Kings Shark 7 and Shark 22 took SE$S workers to South West Rocks to help residents in the area.

On return, one of the two helicopters called at Stuarts Point to evacuated two children. Their father deemed they wouyld be safer with their mother who was in Kempsey at the time.

CMDR Whittaker said 817 Squadron had 27 personnel in the operation and 816 Squadron 22.

The Macleay Valley had been subject of torrential rain with 400mm falling in a few days.

The RAN personnel were just some of the hundreds of emergency workers involved in flood rescue, flood mitigation and clean-up from Grafton in the north to the Hunter in the south.

By Graham Davis