To commemorate the anniversary of the 2022 February 28 natural disaster, we at the Lismore App are celebrating the Bloody Legends of Lismore.

We want to look at the people and companies that really stood up in the community's time of need. Those that not only went above and beyond at the time but continue to help the community as the rebuild takes shape.

Wednesday, we launched with Joel Jensen Constructions, Thursday was Resilient Lismore and today is Southern Cross University (SCU).

Ben Roche is the Vice President Engagement at SCU, one of the key players in making the university readily available for emergency accommodation, emergency office space, temporary schools and temporary housing pods. Ben took the time to have a chat about the SCU journey in the last 12 months.

"As part of the local emergency management committee, we are aware of the kind of the gear up, particularly when the SES is starting to activate and that was happening over the weekend (February 26 & 27 2022), and we knew the rain event was forecast and that it looked significant. So, we were just starting to ready ourselves, but in hindsight, nowhere near the scale that did eventuate, but we were aware."

"We've got our own emergency response protocols, so we often get notified either by the SES or Lismore City Council about the need to stand up the evacuation centre. That's generally the first real indication we get and certainly, that came through on the Sunday that we'll be looking to stand it up."

"As you know, we had a couple of close shaves earlier, so we were kind of aware and ready. Then, really, it was our grounds and our facilities staff led by our Director of Property Services Danika Head who was able to be on-site for most of Sunday night and then very early into Monday. Danika was lucky that she could actually physically get into campus."

"It wasn't until early on the Tuesday morning that I managed to get into campus because I live in Bexhill. Essentially, I was the first Member of the Exec to get on campus and at that point Tyrone, the Vice Chancellor, pretty much gave me delegation to act in his place and to do whatever was necessary."

"I have to say, it was shocking. At that point in time, there had been probably five or six hours of ADF Black Hawk airlifts happening, as well as folks just simply travelling over land. There was already a significant amount of people on campus. The campus was like, the rest of the town, completely without power and even in those early days, it had a very different sense about it to all the other floods that we've been through."

"The same team had effectively been through the 2017 floods, although with a different Vice Chancellor, so we were aware of what to expect. But the bit we didn't anticipate with the ADF, was just those air movements and how frequent they would be."

"How many people would be delivered from all over and what numbers were coming. We had no idea of how many people would ultimately be on campus. We were just really working in a very responsive way to open up buildings as required and then on the ground liaise with all the front line services to let them get set up and to start becoming operative."

"And then really over the hours and the days that ensued, it was really for us looking at where all the cracks were and trying to fill them as best as we could. That was at a scale that, you know, was remarkable."

"Everything from how to solve specific health conditions. For example, I remember vividly on the Saturday, looking at how we could somehow arrange to get a methadone bus to the university so that those folks who were on the methadone programme and now in the evacuation centre, could access the medicine that they needed. There are many storeys like that, but that was an example of how unusual and unprecedented it was."

(Vice Chancellor Tyrone Carlin at the SCU evacuation centre March 2022)

"We estimate that we had about 1400 sleeping at the peak on campus. That's a rubbery figure in many ways and in the sense that there were far more that came through the campus and then either saw the amount of people, saw the scale of trauma or then managed to line up a let room or some other accommodation to stay, and so they would literally pass through, often pick up some clothing or some sort of donated goods, and then go again. So, we don't know, really. I think informally, we would say that would have been upwards of double the amount that was sleeping but of course, we then had other folks who basically were camping all over the campus."

"As you probably remember it looked at times like a shanty town with caravans and tents and cars and vehicles all over the place and that was both a reflection of how full all the buildings were relating to the evac centre but also to the perceptions of the lack of safety and a lack of amenities in the evacuation centre."

What changes did you have to make to your emergency plans and systems?

"What was interesting and fortuitous for us is that we had been through, and again the time frame I'll probably get wrong, but it was probably 12 to 18 months prior to the flood, you might remember, we had that incident on campus where we had what was relayed to be an armed shooter on campus? Which turned out not to be, well, let's just say we certainly didn't apprehend the shooter but we had a significant experience of over seven hours of a complete lockdown, and really from a police operation and a tactical response perspective, a kind of a siege type potential."

"That really highlighted a whole range of areas that we needed to tweak and an example of that was the fact that we came across a whole bunch of shortfalls relating to our emergency announcement and building announcement and alert system. It was an old system. It functioned and worked but did it actually help to manage the show without heightening stress and emotion? No. It had a kind of a shrill sound going continuously for seven hours while folks were trapped and locked in their offices. That was very traumatising for a lot of people."

"So, there's a lot of experience we developed in that regard that really came home during the flood. We had improved systems that we could activate but also, we were just used to, as a core team, which is, really, you know, myself and a couple of others who were the ones on the ground every day managing it. We just got very good at knowing how to work with emergency services, particularly the police and it was the strength of those relationships that were pre-existing, I think, meant that we could move very quickly. We could have very direct conversations with the likes of Superintendent Scott Tanner and also many others across the entire emergency response chain and do so in an informed way and in a productive way, that I think meant we were able to resolve challenges in a really remarkably short time frame."

(Inside the new Business Hub after moving and scaling down from Block A at SCU)

"That was one of the great things the university did during those very challenging first days and really, what turned out to be the first kind of six weeks including the second event. We became part of the response, whereas in any other event like 2017, I think we had probably about 300 in the evacuation centre. We had about 115 businesses working out of our business hub in the enterprise lab. So, we had some sort of understanding of what was going to be involved, the kind of support we'd have to provide and for example, things like the business hub and so forth, that just happened literally with one conversation. The standing up of the health services hub with the Primary Health Network, that was a couple of conversations and then literally four days of trades moving walls and setting up facilities. Literally a week after we had that conversation, they were delivering community health services. So, I hate to say it, but we were getting good at managing emergencies."

"The university became far more than just an evac centre and so things like how to solve the ability to get power and electricity, you know, we solved that. We managed to find the biggest generator in the region, which was at North Ballina and we managed to get it to campus somehow. We managed to get fuel in to keep it running and also to keep vehicles going and all of that."

"At first it was an intuitive response, but then after about the second day or third day, it became a very intentional response. That is, we would say yes first and foremost, and then afterwards deal with what that meant. The scale of need was so, so strong and so significant that we felt the only response we could have would be yes and let's try and make it work."

"I remember vividly on the afternoon on a Tuesday when we started to really think about how are we going to continue to allow the university to operate knowing full well that was the first day back to campus after two years of working from home during COVID, and that was happening in real-time at our Gold Coast and Coffs Harbour campuses. So, we had to manage two very different universities at that point. Lismore, which we effectively shut down for staff and students but then a vibrant return to campus, first time in two years, welcome back in Gold Coast, which is kind of a schizophrenic series of considerations you need to make, but that was the reality of the situation."

Tell us about the different schools coming on campus. Who was first?

"We had formed about two weeks before (flood) an agreement with the Living School, such that they would establish their senior high school on the campus at some point over the next 12 months. As people know, they are a young school, they're not huge numbers, so, that was really just about having access to an underutilised building. So, we'd formed that agreement."

"The Living School were the first to contact us and say, hey look, we were going to put the senior high school in the building, do you mind if we put the entire school in the building? Of which we said sure, that was about 240 students. They started doing that from about the second week onwards and I have to say remarkable fortitude on their part to maintain the opportunity for kids to have some social interaction and engagement."

"Trinity wasn't too far after that. But you might recall Trinity and Richmond River and even Lismore High all closed for a period of time while they just managed to try and assess and work out what was going on. So, Living School was very much active and maintained, I think they probably lost in total about a week of learning, whereas it had been a couple of weeks after we started having those very specific conversations with Trinity and Richmond River, very different conversations."

"Richmond River was really about accessing a parcel of land of ours and that was very much the department's desire to maintain a kind of a separation in a way, whereas Trinity was very keen to come onto campus and utilised our infrastructure."

"Like the emergency services, this was enabled by the fact that we have incredibly strong relationships and partnerships with those schools particularly, but with both the Catholic and the public school system more broadly"

 "As for the future, I'd say it's stabilised but I'd say it's not yet permanent, if that makes sense."

"We've got to a point where we have multi-year agreements with them all. I think they're all on three-year agreements at this point and that was really just to get to a stage where we could meet some of the costs associated with the arrangement. But if you've been on campus, you'll see the state of the road network, for example. Those roads were never built for that amount of public bus movement, so the road networks completely degenerating. We will need to significantly invest to, in my mind, create what is a permanent long-term solution for everybody."

"I think that's the exciting opportunity we have in front of us and, you know, Lismore as a regional centre is endowed with remarkable educational assets. Considering the population size, we have a remarkable university, a remarkable TAFE and some pretty phenomenal schools but we all suffer from challenges of scale. So, the opportunity that we're looking at is just to imagine what an educational precinct could look like on campus. Where we actually kind of transcend those challenges of scale and start to look at why don't we create the region's cutting-edge, state-of-the-art wet laboratory, for example. So, our young folks can engage in the level of learning that is unparalleled globally."

"What it means for us right now is, we're moving staff and students around and we're changing buildings at a scale that is, I have to say, for some really discombobulating. But, the speed that we've moved to accommodate Trinity and the 800 learners that they've got has been remarkable. And the leadership from Jesse and Brother John and others has been really phenomenal to really lean in and engage with that opportunity and do the work that they've done over the summer so that the students can come back to something that is far more resembling a school."

"It's quite exciting in terms of a pathway ahead where we could have a presence of TAFE on campus and a series of senior high schools where we start to think about what could an education pathway look like for a young person in our region such that they may want to stick around and pursue their higher education in the Northern Rivers and not have to leave."

Southern Cross University had some financial questions in the last two to three years, has this seen a reinvention of the uni to make it more viable?

 "Look, I think that's a really accurate statement and I heard the Vice Chancellor yesterday at a panel of at the University of Australia conference reflect on him as a leader, 12 months pre-flood and his understanding of the role and function of the university compared to what it is today and he said he can't reconcile the two, and I think that's right for the individual leaders of the university, but I think for the university as a whole. I think what it has done is that it has given us an opportunity to really rethink who we are but more importantly, why we exist and the purpose we have fundamentally."

"I think that was demonstrated very clearly to the community. You know, we are a university that is deeply connected and really thinks very deeply around how we can help lift the region up to its potential and the opportunity we've got now, although it's a big opportunity in terms of both the vision and also the amount of resources needed to get there."

"Has it been financially beneficial to the university? Well, no, not really. All the response and all the support has really been done off our own back. We have certainly now formed lease agreements to recover, or to meet, in a cost recovery sense, the operation of the buildings and cleaning and security and all that stuff, but we have really met the expenses of this out of our own budget and as a result we will post another deficit this year."

"But, you know what is really exciting is this potential now to step into a very different future for the university and one that I think is far more compelling and exciting."

"There's the education piece but there's also the intersect with emergency services and the intersect with businesses. These are areas that we haven't really even considered in terms of what's the potential in that space. How do we support a more robust and integrated emergency response capability in the region? It's not our job to lead but it is something that we are absolutely willing to play a role, if that's required. And the same in our role, probably more directly, through our research impact to really think about. How are we going to restart the regional economy? And what are those new industries that we need to attract in order to generate the jobs growth to help drive productivity in the region? These are things we're thinking about deeply and we're doing that in concert with all sorts of partners.

"It is a really optimistic future, and I think it's the level of optimism we didn't have before the flood."

Southern Cross University.....Bloody Legend!