A helicopter will fly emergency services to a remote Goldfields community cut off by floodwaters, as West Australian residents call for medical help and extra supplies. 

In the past seven days, a “once in a lifetime” rain event has swamped stations, washed away sections of the Trans-Australia railway, closed the Eyre Highway and left a group of seven travellers stranded.

It has also inundated all roads in and out of Cosmo Newberry, 90 kilometres north east of Laverton and home to about 70 people, with 227 millimetres of rain reported between Saturday and Wednesday.

Kassey Murray, the Cosmo Newberry Aboriginal Corporation community service manager and board secretary, said the road closure meant locals had no access to medical help, and she was getting worried about some residents. 

“We don’t have a nurse here — we haven’t had one in five years,” Ms Murray said.

“So [the flooding has] impacted people getting in to see the local GP in Laverton.

Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) Goldfields Midlands Superintendent Damien Pumphrey said it would fly to the community today and make sure any critical patients were looked after. 

The ABC understands it will land at about 4pm WA time.

“A helicopter with a DFES and WA police representative has been sent to the community today,” Superintendent Pumphrey said.

“Following the reconnaissance flight, if there is a requirement to undertake resupply to support the community, DFES will complete this.

Fears for resident

Ms Murray said she was particularly worried about a man with a chest infection.

“He was quite sick yesterday,” she said. “We have people monitoring him.

She said a helicopter was the only way to get sick people out, as the airstrip was water damaged and roads were virtually impassable. 

“So we have two community member cars stuck on the Great Central Road,” Ms Murray said.

“Then we have three stuck on a road that connects … with the Great Central.

“So we’ve got five vehicles out there.”

Ms Murray said the store truck tried to make it up the Great Central Road yesterday but it also became bogged.

She said they then managed to get two utes into Laverton to pick up perishables and medication, but said they could not fit other supplies.

“Mainly meat and stuff, that’s kind of running down because we have extra people in the community as well that have been stranded here,” Ms Murray said.

“We actually did have to ration out tobacco supply.

Water ‘gushing in’

Ms Murray said houses and infrastructure had also been damaged.

“We’ve got in our son’s room. The moulding from the roof has separated from one of the walls, and we had water gushing in,” she said.

“We lost lights – that we’ve got back now — but we lost lights in our house and there was water dripping through some of the light sockets.”

The region also had a lot of rain in January and Ms Murray said the country was so waterlogged it would likely take a long time for the roads to clear.

She said they were also worried about the damage to country, particularly the sandalwood trees and seedlings that the community had built a business around.

The remote community of Tjuntjuntjara, 650 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie, is also cut off due to flooding.

Calls to seal road intensify 

Shire of Laverton president Patrick Hill there was “a sea of water” between Laverton and Cosmo Newberry.

But he believed the situation could have been avoided if plans to seal the Great Central Road, which is part of the Outback Way, had remained on schedule.

“It’s preventable, all this, to a degree,” Cr Hill said.

“We just want to cut down the risks by getting it sealed, so we don’t have these sorts of issues like this for those communities.”

Ms Murray hoped the project would also involve raising sections of the road to prevent future floods cutting them off completely.

But she said there were some silver linings.

“It’s been five years since we had [lots of] rain here,” Ms Murray said.

“The kids are loving it. The kids are in the water every day swimming.”