It’s been underutilized for seven years: a grand cavernous space carved from the harbor headland best known as the backdrop for several car television commercials and a venue for the 2022 Biennale.
The NSW government is poised to announce a new fit-out to revive Barangaroo’s the Cutaway amid mounting pressure for it to deliver an Indigenous art and cultural center at Barangaroo’s Headland Park.
The Cutaway, Barangaroo is destined for a refit. Credit:Infrastructure NSW
Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council chief executive Nathan Moran says it is a “travesty” that Sydney lacks a culture center staffed and governed by Aboriginal people or a permanent keeping place for Aboriginal cultural artefacts.
“It’s a space as big as the Opera House’s main performance hall, and it’s really sad that this space remains empty; vacant despite our best endeavors to put together cultural projects of the highest quality. To leave it practically empty is an embarrassment for everyone. I’m not joking when I say we’d be better using it as an indoor cricket space.
“At a national Indigenous cultural center at Barangaroo, we could not only show arts and dance but carving, weaving storytelling, the whole gamut, and we could have exhibitions and displays and artist in residents sharing their culture from right across the country.”
The Cutaway, with its flexible shell space, 6500-square-meter footprint and cathedral-like ceilings, is buried in a hill created from a flat wharf – largely the result of Paul Keating’s vision to reinstate the naturalistic headland.
The Cutaway has been carved out of sandstone rock with parking for 300 cars under its floor. Credit:Infrastructure NSW
Infrastructure NSW identified a national Indigenous center as a priority in 2016, a project subsequently costed at about $600 million. More recently, the agency has been developing concept plans to upgrade utilities, and acoustics at the Cutaway to create a versatile function space and potential art gallery.
Asked about its plans, Infrastructure NSW declined to go into specifics but said the refit would allow the Cutaway to realize its full potential as one of Sydney’s premier venues for national and international events.
Nielsen said she was fortunate, as she could clean for herself if she did a little bit every day, but she was concerned for residents who needed assistance showering and with personal care.
“I’m more likely to fail over the vacuum cleaner,” she said. “I can wheel it around, but I’m a bit clumsy with it so that’s why I appreciate having somebody else to do it for me. I do feel sorry for people who are in more dire straits than I am. ”
Megan Peniston-Bird, 77, is disabled with arthritis and her 84-year-old husband has emphysema. The couple has received in-home care from Boroondara council for 10 years, assisting with cleaning.
She was also expecting someone to provide in-home care on Tuesday, but nobody turned up.
“It’s a complete balls-up,” she said. ”It has been absolutely negligent. This is a council that should know better. This is all supposed to be us living in the community and not costing the government a fortune by being in care.”
Boroondara’s decision to exist aged care services was opposed by many elderly residents at the time, who said they were not properly consulted and did not want to change carers.
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A spokesman for Boroondara said mecwacare had advised the council and the government it needed six weeks to transition the elderly residents in Boroondara to its services, and the council had worked to this time frame.
“Mecwacare never disclosed any concern regarding staffing shortages and possible impact to services to council prior to commencing the transition of this Commonwealth government service,” the spokesman said. “If there are service issues, this is a matter for the Commonwealth government as the owner of the service and mecwacare as its provider.”
Boroondara said it made the switch because of the introduction of the government’s Support at Home program, which requires providers to offer specialist services such as occupational therapy and physiotherapy.
A Department of Health and Aged Care spokesman said when Boroondara made the decision to no longer provide aged care services, the government undertook a “rigorous process” to select a new provider.
“It is a matter for both the outgoing and incoming providers to manage the organization and staffing requirements involved in the transition,” the spokesman said. “The department notes there has been some disruption to services as mecwacare on-boards staff. Mecwacare is actively recruiting additional aged care staff to manage the increase in client numbers.”
He said it was unfortunate, but disruptions could occur due to the competitive environment for staff at the moment.
Australian Services Union secretary Lisa Darmanin said Boroondara’s decision to stop providing in-home aged care services had put the welfare of elderly residents at risk.
“Local councils are trusted, reliable providers of in-home aged care services and should not abandon vulnerable elderly residents by ending their role in aged care,” she said. “Privatization of in-home aged care services is not just a policy failure, it is a risk to elderly people who rely on essential in-home aged care service.”
Darmanin said the privatization of aged care services was an issue across the state.
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”The ASU is looking into the continuity of aged care services where other councils have recently made the misguided decision to privatize in-home aged care,” she said. “Every councillor elected to a council still providing in-home aged care services needs to look very closely at what’s happened in Boroondara and consider if that’s what they want [to happen to] elderly people in their community.”
The Municipal Association of Victoria said 23 councils around the state were discontinuing their aged care services or had already done so.
MAV president David Clark said councils had long been providers of services within the aged care services.
“As the federal reforms to the whole aged care sector continue to be implemented, we continue to call for the reforms to provide the capacity that allows councils to remain as service providers without an unfair burden and ensure that any service changes don’t leave older Victorians worse off, in terms of the service they receive,” he said.
Mecwacare did not respond to requests for comment.
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New details have emerged about the man police accuse of murdering a respected farming family in far-north Queensland.
Darryl Young, 59, has been charged with murdering Mervyn Schwarz, 71, his wife Maree, 59, and her son Graham Tighe, 35, at the gates of his property in Bogie, which bordered the Schwarz’s farm.
Mr Tighe’s brother, Ross, was shot in the stomach, but miraculously survived after driving more than 40km to a neighboring farm to raise an alarm.
He was flown to Mackay hospital and underwent emergency surgery on Thursday night.
Police said there was a long-running boundary dispute between Young and the Schwarz’s, who purchased the sprawling 30,000ha farm for $10 million last year.
Police said Young, the Schwarz’s and the Tighe’s agreed to meet at the fence of Young’s property in a phone conversation on Wednesday evening.
Police will allege Young shot the four victims “execution-style” with a rifle.
Young is listed to appear in the Proserpine Magistrates Court on Monday.
On Friday he was charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, after five people were initially taken into custody.
Young is a long-time Bogie resident who reportedly lives with his daughter, believed to be in her 20s, outside of Bowen.
He is said to be well-known in the farming community, having owned property as far south as Gladstone.
NSW rail workers are ramping up industrial action for a month from Sunday by refusing to issue fines, leaving gates at train stations open and taking part in rolling targeted strikes.
Key points:
The rail union wants the government to commit in writing to safety changes for the intercity fleet
The $2 billion fleet was due to be rolled out in 2019
A ban on driving foreign-made trains and cleaners using vacuum cleaners is part of the industrial action
The action is part of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union’s (RTBU) ongoing campaign to secure safety changes to the new intercity fleet, in the face of what they say is the NSW government’s stubborn refusal to do so.
RTBU NSW secretary Alex Claassens said workers were hopeful the government would sign a document committing to the modifications.
“We’ve done everything by the book in order to get these vital safety changes, but the government is refusing to listen,” he said.
“We’ve had plenty of verbal promises before, which is why this time we need to see it committed to in a binding document.”
Alex Claassens hopes the NSW government will commit to fixing the intercity fleet.(abcnews)
The union and the state government have for months been at odds over the safety of the $2 billion intercity fleet, which has remained idle in maintenance sheds despite a planned rollout in 2019.
One of the main points of concern for the union is guards not being able to see children “during crucial moments.”
Rolling strikes will start on Wednesday, August 10 from 10am to 4pm, with the union saying strikes will occur in one area at a time — meaning that trains will be able to continue to run in most areas of the state.
Commuters will also face rolling strikes on Wednesday, August 17, Tuesday, August 23 and Thursday, August 25.
Other industrial action includes a ban on operating foreign-made trains, transport officers not issuing fines and a ban on cleaners using vacuum cleaners or scrubbing machines.
Mr Claassens said he accepted there would be some impact on commuters, but said the union would try to minimize it.
“We’ve done a lot of work to ensure that our actions will impact management and the government and not the traveling public,” he said.
“There’s no reason why, with some planning and common sense, trains cannot continue to run relatively smoothly while our actions are happening.
“We understand that commuters will be frustrated because we’re frustrated too.”
Perth scientists have breathed life into a decades-old German mystery of an unknown man’s body found floating in the North Sea, using the adage “you are what you eat” to discover he may be from Australia.
The man, dubbed “The Gentleman” by investigators in 1994 after his body was found by police off the coast of the Helgoland, a German archipelago, was weighed down by cast iron cobbler’s feet.
He earned The Gentleman nickname due to his smart clothing; a wool tie, British-made shoes, French-made trousers and a long-sleeve blue dress shirt.
Australian scientists may have helped solve the mystery of “The Gentleman.”Credit:Murdoch University
The case has baffled German police for 28 years, but criminologists and forensic scientists from Murdoch University may have helped to unravel the mystery after they ran new tests.
They found the man spent most of his life in Australia. Investigators in the 1990s determined he was 45 to 50 years old.
The discovery marks the last day of Australia’s National Missing Person’s Week on Saturday.
Scientists made the discovery by following the principle of “you are what you eat”, performing an isotope ratio analysis of The Gentleman’s bones.
Differences in climate, soil and human activity across the globe change the isotopic compositions of food, water and even dust – reflected in the isotopic compositions of human tissue.
Analysis showed the man likely spent most of his life in Australia.
The Great Barrier Reef is one of the planet’s natural jewels, stretching for more than 2,300km along Australia’s north-east.
But as well as being a bucket-list favorite and a heaving mass of biodiversity across 3,000 individual reefs, the world heritage-listed organism is at the coalface of the climate crisis.
Yet this week, a report on the amount of coral across the reef showed the highest level in the 36 years of monitoring in the north and central parts.
But that does not mean the crisis is over.
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Ecosystems get hit with multiple threats and disturbances, and for the reef those include invasions by voracious coral-eating starfish, pollution running off from the land and destructive cyclones.
The overwhelming threat is the climate heating, which has caused corals to bleach in masse six times since 1998.
The Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims), which runs the monitoring program, surveyed 87 reefs. The report counts hard coral – an important measure because their skeletons are what builds structure for reefs.
The increase in coral cover was thanks to a fast-growing acropora corals that are also the most susceptible to heat stress and are favored by coral-eating starfish.
Resilience versus threats
Conditions in recent years have been relatively benign, with few cyclones, low numbers of starfish and two summers dominated by La Niña weather pattern that usually means cooler conditions.
But earlier this year was the first mass coral bleaching in a La Niña year – an event that shocked and surprised marine scientists who expect those cooler years will give corals a clear run to recover. Global heating now means even La Niña years are not safe for corals. The inevitable arrival of a warmer El Niño phase has many extremely worried.
The first ever mass bleaching was in 1998, followed by events in 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2022. One study found only 2% of all reefs have escaped bleaching since 1998.
For the most recent Aims monitoring report, about half the reefs were visited before this summer’s bleaching. While bleaching was widespread, Aims said the heat was likely not high enough to have killed many corals outright.
Depending on the severity of heat stress, corals can survive or die. If corals sit in hotter-than-usual water for too long, they lose the algae that gives them their color and most of their food.
This means coral starvation, so the events have sub-lethal effects on the growth rate, the ability to reproduce and susceptibility to disease.
Reef scientists talk about the resilience of the reef – the ability to bounce back from disturbances.
“There’s no question this is good news,” says Dr David Wachenfeld, chief scientist at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
“But we would be in deep trouble if in 2022, at 1.1C of global heating, the reef had already lost that resilience. We would have no chance of keeping the reef in a healthy condition.
“According to last year’s [UN climate assessment], we are going to be at 1.5C of warming in the next decade. That’s an extremely confronting forecast. To a thermally sensitive ecosystem like the reef, that’s a lot and it’s only about a decade away.”
Global heating of 1.5C is considered a guardrail for reefs, after which the bleaching comes along too quickly for strong recovery.
“We’re on a trajectory to blast past 1.5C and get to 2.6C or 2.7C. So the resilience we see at 1.1C will not continue,” says Wachenfeld.
Unchartered territory
Dr Mike Emslie, who leads the Aims monitoring, says the rise in coral cover was expected, given the relatively benign conditions, but four bleaching events in seven years was uncharted territory.
“We have dodged a couple of bullets in the last couple of years and while this recovery is great, the predictions are the disturbances will get worse,” he says.
In some conservative media, the survey has been used to push arguments the reef is not under threat. “The naysayers can put their heads in the sand all they like, but the frequency of disturbances is going gangbusters,” says Emslie.
Wachenfeld points out that scientists have never said the reef is dead. “Scientists have been ringing an alarm bell, not a funeral director,” he says. “The notion scientists have been misleading people is a nonsense.”
He likens the reef’s resilience to a rubber band that can be stretched many times, but only so far before it snaps.
“It’s hard to predict when that will happen, but it’s a bit like that with the reef,” he says. “We have a limited amount of time to slow and stop the warming. There is no way this resilience can last forever.”
Most newcomers to Mareeba are enticed by wide open spaces and the promise of at least 300 sunny days a year but, like the rest of regional Australia, it too has a rental crisis.
Key points:
The Atherton Tablelands has one of the lowest rental vacancy rates in Queensland at 0.2 per cent
Social welfare organizations are handing out tents to those in need of emergency accommodation
Finding safe places to camp out is becoming increasingly difficult during peak tourist season
For Guy Closset, the lure was the prospect of somewhere better to live than in a tent or beneath the condemned building of a disused school in Atherton.
“[My partner] was kicked out of where she was staying and I didn’t want her to be on the street by herself, so I ended up staying with her,” he said.
The couple had been in the Atherton Tablelands, which has one of the lowest rental vacancy rates in Queensland, at 0.2 per cent.
Mr Closset was already living precariously, having lost work when the pandemic broke out.
“I was staying with my mum but I was more couch surfing,” the experienced warehouseman and worker said.
“I was sleeping in the front room, you know, and then I met my partner.”
A crowded market
The move to Mareeba, a larger centre, has allowed Mr Closset and his pregnant partner to live more securely in a caravan at a tourist park, at a cost of $260 a week, while they search for a house.
But Mareeba’s rental vacancy rate is only marginally less tight – 0.3 per cent according to the Real Estate Institute of Queensland.
Robert Larkin says it’s become increasingly difficult to find properties for those in need.(ABC Far North Queensland: Christopher Testa)
“A lot of properties that were rented are now being sold, and the new owners are living in them,” Robert Larkin of Mareeba Community Housing said.
Mr Larkin, a housing supervisor who works with those experiencing homelessness, said his organization had about 200 clients on his books at any one time.
He knew of one woman spending 60 per cent of her income on rent.
No emergency accommodation
The shortage of available rentals has made it harder for housing organizations to provide emergency shelter for those in need.
Many have resorted to handing out tents to families with nowhere to go.
Miriam Newton-Gentle, ministry worker and leader of the Salvation Army on the Atherton Tablelands, said the lack of crisis options magnified the problem in the rural area.
“One of the big things is we have absolutely no emergency accommodation,” she said.
“We’ve got small hotels and motels but they can’t take people long term, so when people are rendered homeless, they are absolutely homeless.”
A camp set up beneath an abandoned building in Cairns.(ABC Far North Queensland: Brendan Mounter)
Mr Larkin said caravan parks were traditionally the “go-to” crisis accommodation of choice for providers in the Tablelands as they were an “easy transition for people who are sleeping rough”.
“But right now, caravan parks are full because we have a lot of travelers coming through with their own camper wagons and so there isn’t as much available,” he said.
“This is probably as tough as it’s been.”
A shortage of homes
The closest crisis accommodation to the Tablelands is in Cairns, just a short drive away.
But Far North Queensland’s largest center is battling the same problem and places are hard to come by.
The Queensland Audit Office also published a report last month indicating people in the region eligible for social housing were spending an average of two years on the waitlist.
A spokesperson for the Queensland housing department said $2.9 billion was being spent to increase the supply of social and affordable homes across the state by almost 10,000 over the decade to 2027.
Over four years, 234 new social homes will be built in Far North Queensland, in addition to 174 commenced in the past five years.
But Aimee McVeigh, CEO of the Queensland Council of Social Services, said the state government needed to invest in building at least 5,000 new homes each year statewide over the next decade to meet demand.
“We [also] urgently need more crisis accommodation, so families have a roof rather than a tent over their head while they’re looking for secure long-term options,” Ms McVeigh said.
Tablelands Regional Council will investigate whether this block could be developed into medium or high-density housing.(ABC Far North Queensland: Christopher Testa)
The Tablelands Regional Council recently voted to investigate whether it could sell off a block of council-owned land in Atherton for medium or high-density housing.
While more than a quarter of homes nationwide are semi-detached, units or apartments, that figure is less than 7 per cent on the Tablelands.
Mr Larkin said about 70 to 80 per cent of his clients were couch surfing, living in carports, or in the backs of utes.
“We could do with demountable housing that could be brought in as they did across Europe after the Second World War,” Ms Newton-Gentle said.
“It doesn’t exactly give people hope to give them a tent, it really doesn’t.”
“We don’t have much space, we don’t have much tree cover. That’s where our canopy is. If you go there, that’s where all the birds live. That’s where all the shade is,” she said.
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Liby said the council’s stadium strategy indicated the facility could have as many as six courts and 320 car parking spaces. She said a stadium of that size would take up about 14,000 square meters of space, about the size of 30 house blocks.
“That’s how much of the park would be gone. And there’s really just not much actual parkland that’s left there,” she said.
The council has said that an indoor stadium at McIvor Reserve was only “an idea, not a proposal” and that it was gathering feedback from people who use the park before making any further decisions.
At a council meeting this week, Maribyrnong chief executive Celia Haddock said no determination had been made on the stadium’s design or location.
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“I again reiterate that no decision has been made on McIvor Reserve. Council is simply investigating it as an option,” she said.
However, Liby said that she believed there was more going on behind the scenes than the council was willing to reveal.
She highlighted opposition to plans for Melbourne Victory to build a soccer academy at Footscray Park and the Yarraville “Arab Spring” parking meter saga as other examples of poor consultation by the council.
“They are not high schoolers that are cramming for an exam that are going to pull it out at the last moment,” she said.
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“They’re not being transparent about so many things, which leaves the community with very little confidence that they’re being forthcoming with us about what’s really going on.”
Barbara Hart, who has lived in a house overlooking the park for 16 years, said she was concerned.
“Why aren’t they looking at disused industrial sites in the area? There’s a lot of them and the council could be looking to purchase that sort of land,” she said.
“We all acknowledge that there needs to be more basketball and netball courts, but not at the expense of green open space.”
Another resident, Kylie Michel, said the COVID-19 lockdowns had demonstrated the importance of having open space close to where you lived.
She said the western suburbs were often identified as an area with a shortage of tree cover and green space.
“It’s such a beautiful space, but we know once it’s taken away, it can be lost forever,” she said.
An online community forum to discuss the McIvor Reserve master plan will be held by Maribyrnong City Council on August 8.
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Reducing access to humanities degrees will reduce critical thinking among the population and disadvantaged regional students, academics have warned, as Federation University prepares to ax its Bachelor of Arts (BA) program from 2023.
Key points:
Federation University is preparing to ax its Bachelor of Arts degree from 2023
The Federal Education Department will review recent fee-hikes for humanities degrees
Academics say art degrees play a critical role in teaching young people to think critically
Making the decision less than two years after the former federal government doubled fees for humanities degrees, the university blamed the cut on declining enrollments from international and domestic students.
“Student commencements have failed from 87 in 2018 to just 27 in 2022,” acting vice-chancellor Professor Wendy Cross said.
“The Federation will continue to offer many of the courses that were part of the BA program … and we will redeploy staff where possible.”
The Federation operates two main campuses, in Churchill and Ballarat, as well as other smaller locations.(Supplied: Federation University)
A ‘short-sighted’ move
The move was labeled “short-sighted” by Ballarat-based professional historian Lucy Bracey.
“Cutting off access to this, not only does it limit future students — it particularly disadvantages regional students,” Ms Bracey said.
Professional historian Lucy Bracey believes the fostering of critical thinking is at risk.(Supplied)
She said undertaking a degree in humanities taught young people critical thinking.
“You learn to evaluate sources, to learn to research,” Ms Bracey said.
“You learn to look at what you’re reading, [and] think about who created the source [and] why it was created.
“Critical thinking is allowing you to not just accept what you’re reading in the newspaper or told on the TV.”
Job-ready Graduates to be reviewed
The former federal government decided in 2020 to hike fees dramatically for humanities degrees under its Job-ready Graduates package, which simultaneously reduced the cost of science, engineering, nursing, health, teaching and maths degrees.
A federal Department of Education spokesperson said a “review” into the program would begin in the second half of this year.
“The government will appoint eminent Australians to conduct a universities accord, which will work with universities to consider things like affordability and accessibility,” the spokesperson said.
The Job-ready Graduates package will be reviewed this year.(pexels.com)
Arts apart from the ‘ecosystem’
Queensland University of Technology Professor Sandra Gattenhof was the chief investigator for the Australian Research Council linkage project, The Role of the Creative Arts in Regional Australia: a Social Impact Model.
“From our research it shows that any kind of arts engagement, whether it be the small crafting groups, to big events, to things like courses at regional university … they’re all part of an ecosystem,” Professor Gattenhof said.
“And the minute you take one bit of the ecosystem out, it means… the connections that are within that community begin to fragment.”
She said arts and humanities played a vital role within regional areas to create greater social inclusion.
“Often when we talk about regional community, we often talk about statistics — regional trade and tourism statistics,” Professor Gattenhof said.
“But we forget that arts, culture, and creativity, in and of itself, is a wellbeing indicator.
“If you have that in your community, your community is what we call, ‘thriving’.”
Federation University has blamed low enrollments for ending its Bachelor of Arts program.(ABC News: Mark Leonardi)
A disappointing anniversary
This year marks the 150th anniversary of Victoria’s Education Act, which made education free, secular, and compulsory for young students.
Ms Bracey said it was disappointing to see a reduction in student opportunities in 2022.
“There’s a current thinking in society that is, if you’re not doing something that has an immediate job outcome at the end of it… it’s not worth doing,” she said.
“And there’s so many things wrong with that.
“There are over 500 professional historians, working across Australia, who all have an arts degree background.”
Queensland councils want to mandate flood risk disclosures for property buyers, with one south-east mayor describing the move as “common sense”.
Key points:
A property’s flood risk should be disclosed to potential buyers, Queensland councils say
The new push comes as hundreds of homeowners register for voluntary buy-backs after the recent floods
The government is considering a statutory disclosure scheme but the LGAQ says it’s not strong enough
Moreton Bay Regional Council Mayor Peter Flannery said his council would take the proposal to the Local Government Association of Queensland conference in October.
“Personally, I think this is common sense and some property buyers are entitled to know prior to purchase,” Mr Flannery said.
“This might be as simple as mandatory disclosures of flood and other natural hazard risks during the property conveyancing process or other due diligence searches.
“I think this is an important and easy change for the state government, and I’m confident of getting the support of Queensland’s other councils.”
So far, more than 4,250 residents have registered their interest to have their homes raised, rebuilt or voluntarily bought back under the state’s $741 million Resilient Homes Fund, announced after the February floods.
Of the 443 home owners registered for a voluntary buy-back, 70 per cent live in Brisbane and Ipswich.
Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner threw his support behind Moreton Bay’s proposal.
“You wouldn’t buy a home without first getting a pest inspection, yet flooding risks can be so much destructive and costly than termites,” Mr Schrinner said.
“It makes sense that buyers should be fully aware of any flood or natural disaster risks before buying.”
Proposed seller disclosure program
Deputy Premier and State Development Minister Steven Miles says Queensland “has to do better” to account for the impacts of climate change.
“In the short term, we’re looking at ways to make it easier and quicker for local governments to change their local planning schemes to respond to the effects of flooding,” he said.
“We’re also looking at ways to make sure natural hazard risk is disclosed to prospective buyers, so they’re aware of potential risks.”
Queensland is calling for submissions on a proposed statutory seller disclosure program.
Currently, it has no formal system, with sellers having to meet a mix of common law, statutory and contractual obligations.
Local Government Association of Queensland chief executive Alison Smith said mandating flood risk disclosure would put Queensland on a par with NSW and Victoria.
“The state is currently calling for submissions on its proposed statutory seller disclosure requirements, and the LGAQ and its member councils will be submitting that the current draft does not go far enough, and should include floods and other natural hazard information,” she said.
Flood mapping complicated
But Real Estate Institute of Queensland chief executive Antonia Mercorella said while mandating disclosure sounded simple, it could become complex when determining what a property’s level of flood risk was.
Ms Mercorella said local governments already provided detailed flood mapping, but even so, some residents were still caught by surprise when floods hit.
“Flooding happens for a number of reasons, so we need to be careful about what even constitutes a flood, what are the causes of a flood,” she said.
“Flood mapping is becoming more sophisticated. It’s becoming more reliable, but ultimately Mother Nature keeps surprising us.
“Just because a property hasn’t flooded previously, I don’t think that necessarily means it won’t flood in the future.
“And similarly, just because a property has flooded in the past doesn’t necessarily mean it will flood again in the future.”
