The Inverell SES Unit celebrated its 49th birthday yesterday as it looked back at its early days.
In 1976 Dennis Bailey was the first Local Controller with SES stalwart David Jones becoming the Flood Forecaster the same day.
The first flood they had to deal with occurred two days later on 26 Feb 1976, with a forecast flood peak of 5.13m at 2pm.
The flood peaked at 4.95m at 1.30pm, 0.18m lower than his prediction.
Since 1864, major floods never occurred further apart than 13 years until February 7th 1991 when the Unit predicted a flood peak of 6 metres at 6pm which was the exact height it came too.
There hasn’t been a flood over the bank since 1991, which is 34 years ago.
