Eight Rotary Exchange members from Pennsylvania in the U.S. visited Lismore this week as part of an international program with Rotary International to provide goodwill, and friendship plus learn about each other's projects as well as visit tourist areas.

The Lismore App caught up with the group at Steve and Julie Krieg's La Barraca cafe for lunch yesterday to get their impressions of Lismore.

When you live in a city that has been devastated by a natural disaster your view is skewed in how you see the recovery, so we sought a fresh perspective from Dee and Cindy.

(Dee and Cindy on the couch having a chat about Lismore at La Barraca yesterday)

The group started their time at Tweed Heads, spending four days in Lismore before travelling to Tenterfield later today, Surfers Paradise then home for some or an extended holiday for others.

"It's been nice. We went to Prospect Falls while we were here," Cindy started, "And the biggest thing is touring around and seeing the floods and seeing how many people still haven't been able to rebuild."

"My son was in New Orleans for Katrina when the levees broke, and five years later, there were still houses not rebuilt, and probably still to this day."

"I'm pretty impressed with the rebuilding that's been going on," Cindy added. "It looks like the community really wants to rebuild. It's hard for us because the height of the water of the clubs and the houses and the destruction was horrible. I've not seen destruction that high in a flood before. But it looks like it's slowly starting to come back."

"I've been amazed because in New Orleans, so many people died, there were over a thousand deaths. Where here, amazingly, only four or five deaths. Considering how high the water was and the fact that it was overnight, which is what happened in New Orleans, the levees broke overnight, not during the day, so people weren't prepared for it. And the same here although a lot of livestock was lost."

"In New Orleans, we were told to evacuate. It was a mandatory evacuation. But the problem is the airport shut down, the train shut down, plus you couldn't get gas, so many people had to abandon their cars and never got out. But here, it was not that things were shut down but people didn't know what was coming."

Dee added, "I find here, and it's very similar to New Orleans, that it seems like the poor areas are the ones that didn't have the means to rebuild right away. I asked if people here got money from the government to rebuild. I was reading an article and it was one of the things that people were complaining about, that some people didn't get money to be bought out, even though their house cannot be rebuilt because she said some of them will not be allowed to be rebuilt."

Cindy and Dee were amazed by the number of volunteers who helped in the rescue and recovery of Lismore.

"We were at a Rotary meeting last night, and were told that over a million dollars was raised with Rotary and a lot of small shelters have been provided to people which is one of the things Rotary does good," Cindy said.

"And then put right on people's land. Our government gave out trailers and people were in them for a long time. We were told they are made to be five years but he thinks people will be in them longer than five years here and I believe that driving around two years later."

It was not all gloom and doom though.

"A lot has been done. You can see some of the stores have been rebuilt. We were in some store owner shops this morning in the city centre. One store owner showed us where the floods have been, and when we said we were Rotary they said, wow, thank you very much for what you've done."

"We were in Nimbin at an art gallery, walking around stores that had reopened. A lady was the store clerk and saw our names and said oh, your Rotary, thank you, two of my friends got some of your houses as a result of that. I said thank you but we're from the United States."

"I see some of the infrastructure rebuilding in terms of the library, I think so they're starting to redo that. You can see some of the infrastructure along the roads has now been done."

"You can see progress. Actually, when I heard about the flood, the rebuilding is better than I expected. I've been in a number of developing countries and have seen damages and to me, this was better than that. It's still slow and there are still a lot of problems because it was major, but it is much better."

"You should be proud that you have done a lot."

As a community, we should be proud of where we are and how the big flood has pulled our community together. We may not see it but others do.