MidCoast Council’s engineering team continues to work through the mammoth task of repairing flood-damage to its huge roads network.
With more than 100 landslides across the region, clearing and stabilising mountain roads is a major part of the flood recovery process, while damaged pavement is keeping Council’s patching crews busier than ever.
“Working through damage of this scale is a multi-faceted process,” said MidCoast Council’s Director of Infrastructure and Engineering, Rob Scott.
“While our patching work is highly visible, coordinating the major work that needs to be done across our mountain roads can take months,” he said.
“We had more than 40 landslips on one road – that’s what we’re dealing with – so once we were able to get past one slip, we were cut off by another, and that means we were simply trying to clear a path through before we could even assess the damage and safety issues.”
He said specialist machinery was required – as well as qualified contractors – to complete the major repair work, but said these teams and equipment were in high demand.
“Our number one priority when tackling the recovery of our roads, is safety.”
“That’s why we will patch first, where possible, as a temporary measure to ensure the road is safe to travel on, and until we can get in and do a full reconstruction or more thorough repair.
“The hardest part to understand though, is that our roads program now has to change to accommodate the urgent work on our roads that remain closed since the floods, we need to get our network fully reopen and this will mean rescheduling some works in favour of others.”
To keep the community up to date with the road flood recovery operations, Council has created a ‘Roads Focus – Flood Recovery’ page on its website that has weekly updates of where the maintenance crews are and a long-term flood damaged roads log that shows the progress of the worst hit roads, as well as a place to report damaged roads that need attention.
“We really appreciate the patience, understanding and encouragement we’ve received throughout this difficult time and we’ve got a long way to go,” said Mr Scott.
To view the roads focus page: https://www.midcoast.nsw.gov.au/Roads/Roads-focus-Flood-recovery
