
There's a woman alone in South Lismore waiting with no boats or rescue teams in sight.
There are at least three groups of people - including 12 kids and 10 dogs in urgent need scattered around town. One child is injured.
There's an elderly couple who need help in the east. We know one of them can't swim.
They are just a handful of people who have been waiting to be rescued as their homes fill with water. Some standing on roofs, some on cupboards, some in chest deep water.
The northern NSW town of Lismore is currently enduring its worst flood in history. A flood many could never imagine would be so severe.
It was something Lismore resident, Raiha, thought herself, before she had to clamber into her attic along with her partner, his father and their kitten, as water rose through their house.
"At 6:30 am the water was already covering our yard fence, which is roughly 1.5m high so we got onto SES and Triple Zero. They knew we were there but they had no resources to get us. So we were in the attic as the water had reached our second floor which we never thought would happen," she told Mamamia.
Thankfully, a fortunately timed trip to the bathroom led to her family's rescue.
"I needed to use the loo so I came out of the attic at just right time and saw a boat maybe 300 to 400 metres away. I just started yelling and screaming. I had a fluro shirt on and took it off to wave the boat down I could see they slightly turned our way and were coming."
On it were a group of locals rescuing people from their homes.
"It was such a sigh of relief [when I saw the boat] as five minutes earlier I was pretty scared and teary-eyed in the attic with our kitten."
"Our boat ride to Wyrallah was maybe 30 mins as we had to find the river and avoid debris. We came across two houses; the first house had an elderly couple who didn’t want any help and the second house had three adults but one was an elderly lady so after we were dropped off they were rescued by the same people."
"We also saw a lot of calves and cows treading water or nearly under."
Elsewhere in Lismore, Arlie and her two kids have had to leave the home she shares with her husband and in-laws when flood water began rising yesterday.
"Originally the plan was to stay home and wait for the flood to pass, it originally wasn’t meant to come into our house, which historically hadn’t been flood affected," she told Mamamia.
With her husband away for work in Moree, it soon became clear the family were going to be flooded in.
"I did a last minute dash to Woolworths at 8:30pm on Sunday the 27th for some supplies for my daughter’s birthday the next day and essentials for a day or so until the flood water would go down again and we could leave the house.