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Flooding at Murwillumbah airport


SGM

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Sad. 
In the middle of the photo is the white top of someone's fuselage, a vertical and part of a black prop. 
To the left is a flying boat.  I had a chat to this owner when I visited December, (at that stage he was putting the finishing touches on the restoration and preparing for a first flight - the Tweed River is not too far away)

In the background, on the other side of the North-South runway, are two hanger buildings also well underwater.

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Edited by SGM
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there were 3 or 4 aircraft in photos from the airfield yesterday. They could not have moved them out because the runway was partially flooded. I suspect there are going to be many more aircraft destroyed at this airfield. Perhaps the others have floated away.

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I don't understand why the owners didn't move the aircraft out to higher ground when they became aware of the potential of heavy flooding.

It's not like they had no warning, and no time to shift the aircraft, and it's not like this has never happened before in this region.

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Looks to be going down slightly... At least ol' mates float-thingy is fairly watertight! 
Current1.jpg

I think that farther one is a Comanche but not sure what the nearer one is. Sad to see another one of those get written off. Though they are corrosion proofed from the factory, and it is fresh(ish) water....🤞
Current2.jpg

 

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Here's the scene from Murwillimbah this morning...

The first one here is definitely a Comanche, an earlier -250 now she's emerged from her swim. There's numbers on the side of her new-found friend so I still can't pick what it is, but it looks a bit like a KR2 or Morgan Sierra.
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The float-thingy is back on her feet, but the one in the mid-ground looks to be in a bad way...Current1.jpg

EDIT: Turns out these images in my above post will always be the current images from the weather-cam, so in days to come, they may well show bright sunny sky with nothing but green grass to be seen, hence why they are now the same as the photos in this post....The ones attached to this post were saved to my local drive and uploaded from there, so they will stay the same.

Edited by KRviator
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Just now, skippydiesel said:

Its history(sad)  for the aircraft above - what of the airfields, in the path of this deluge,  further south? Isn't Grafton pretty low  & close to the river?

South Grafton I think is, they're only 1000m from the river, but I had a look at the NSW Gov't SIXMaps page just now and it looks to be protected by a levee bank along the river - but if water gets through or around that, all bets are off I'd imagine!

The latest BOM plot for the Clarance River at Grafton shows it to have just peaked at around 7.8m - which is 3.4m above the major flood level. It's now trending downwards slowly, but that may well rise further if they get more rain in the catchment.

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1 hour ago, KRviator said:

South Grafton I think is, they're only 1000m from the river, but I had a look at the NSW Gov't SIXMaps page just now and it looks to be protected by a levee bank along the river - but if water gets through or around that, all bets are off I'd imagine!

The latest BOM plot for the Clarance River at Grafton shows it to have just peaked at around 7.8m - which is 3.4m above the major flood level. It's now trending downwards slowly, but that may well rise further if they get more rain in the catchment.

There are two Grafton airfields - I get confused (hopefully not when landing) There is the small one that's almost in town and the bigger  RPT one some distance away. Its the small (in town) one, that I visited years ago & remember as being close to the river.

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South Grafton airfield.

Tony Hayes had a Hummel Bird there  ( end hanger l believe ).

They ( Hummels) should only need a couple of large inner tubes, under their wings, to float above water.

spacesailor

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