Operation Flood Assist daily briefing

DAVID THOMAE: Good morning, everybody. My name is David Thomae. I'm the commander of Joint Task Force 629. That's the headquarters that runs the ADF response to domestic operations and in particular Operation Flight Assist. Talking to you today from the Army Reserve Depot in Lismore, which is our current base of operations for Northern New South Wales.

I'm pleased to say over the next for the rest of today we will build up to 3000 troops in Northern New South Wales, spread across from the Tweed all the way down to Grafton. Today we will have approximately 500 people arriving into Casino which will give us a better presence to move into those most affected and remote communities. We continue to provide food supplies by both land and air into those communities and our soldiers have been out in the most affected communities such as Coraki to provide support to the local community. Over the next couple of days, we will build up to 6000 nationally spread between our operations in Southeast Queensland, Northern New South Wales, and in preparation for anything that we might be required to do in Sydney as the flood waters recede in Sydney. I might leave it there and just open to questions.

SPEAKER: On that point Major General, a lot of people here in Lismore and in preparation for Sydney are saying where was that as they were in crisis, people were having to be rescued and looking to the sky for helicopters. Can you explain to all the people why that didn’t happen?

DAVID THOMAE: Well, I don't accept it didn't happen because the Commonwealth Disaster management plan was enacted on the 25 February that's prior to the events in Brisbane and in Northern New South Wales. So, we were already pre-positioning, particularly locally. So, we don't have a big army base in Northern New South Wales. So, we relied on the reserve organisation that's based here where we are right here today. They were there at that moment of crisis for Lismore. Our helicopters were here conducting rescues. I heard a story yesterday from five soldiers who were winched in - in those early days to rescue three elderly people from a house that was hit by a mudslide.

So, I think we've got to be really… in terms of the emergency response, the SES did a great job within the resources that they had here at that moment of crisis, and we were there as well.

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