Showing posts with label Byron Shire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Byron Shire. Show all posts

Thursday 28 April 2022

$312 million roads funding boost. It's a little being asked to go a long way in flood ravaged regional NSW, but it's still good news


 Approaches to Main Arm, NSW, March 2022

IMAGE: Byron Shire Council


IMAGE: ABC News

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Byron Shire Council, media release, 22 April 2022:



Byron Shire to share in $312 million roads funding boost


Byron Shire Mayor, Michael Lyon, has welcomed the news of the Australian and NSW Governments’ $312 million Regional Roads and Transport Recovery Package saying it will have long-lasting benefits for communities in the Byron Shire.


Mayor Lyon this week met the NSW Minister for Regional Roads and Transport, Sam Farraway, and other Mayors and Members of Parliament in Lismore, to hear details of the funding package and to discuss the way forward in relation to the repair and rebuilding of roads and infrastructure in the Northern Rivers.


This joint funding from the Australian and NSW Governments will go a long way to ensuring our roads and bridges are not just rebuilt, but they will be to a standard that will better withstand future floods,” Mayor Lyon said.


The term people use for this is ‘betterment’ – which in the context of a natural disaster is the process of building a damaged road or bridge back better than its original condition prior to the event,” he said.


This is about building resilience into our road network which is a very encouraging development, it is something European countries do very well, spending money on prevention, rather than recovery.


Traditionally, the State Government would only fund the restoration of an asset, leaving the cost of any identified improvements which could mitigate damage in a future event to Council.


Given Council’s usually stretched financial situation, these improvements rarely, if ever, got funded.


We have been lobbying for years for the idea of betterment to be funded as part of the recovery from a natural disaster, because it makes sense and it saves dollars in the long run as well as minimising disruption caused by these events,” Mayor Lyon said.


The meeting with Minister Farraway, NSW Transport officials, local Members of Parliament, Mayors and General Managers was most valuable as we talked through how we can most effectively respond to the enormous rebuilding challenge before us and ensure that we have a coordinated, regional approach, given we are all competing in some way for the same resources.


Minister Farraway has visited the region several times since the first flood and it has been impressive to know he listened to our concerns around betterment, the need for it and then to effectively lobby on behalf of our region and come up with a result for our community.


It sets a good precedent for the future and our ability to be resilient in the face of the expected increased frequency of natural disasters.


Simon Richardson, our previous Mayor, was very good at recognising the desire in other people to do good things, irrespective of their political flag and he was able to obtain funding for our area through this approach.


I intend to seek to emulate this approach with the intention being to secure as much funding as possible for the benefit of our residents and businesses.


The recovery in the Byron Shire, and in the Northern Rivers, is going to be a long, slow process, and it’s going to test everyone.


This sort of financial package takes some of the pressure off and for this I am very thankful,” Mayor Lyon said.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Palmwoods Road Reconstruction
March 2022
IMAGE: Byron Shire Council


Sunday 9 January 2022

COVID-19 State of Play Northern NSW 2022: what a difference three months make


THEN


Excerpt from a Statement from Lynne Weir, Acting Chief Executive Northern NSW Local Health District, 23 September 2021:


In our District, there are currently sufficient Intensive Care beds across our three major hospitals in Grafton, Lismore and Tweed, with plans in place to surge staffing and intensive care capacity, if and when required, our networked hospital system ensures patients can be transferred or redirected to other hospitals where necessary, including private hospitals.


Throughout the early stages of the pandemic, we sourced additional equipment, including ventilators, and we regularly review our stocks and supply chains of resources, including PPE and pharmacy items, to ensure adequate supplies.


From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Northern NSW Local Health District has been actively increasing its staffing and upskilling its workforce in readiness to care for COVID-19 patients in our region.


Additional training programs were developed for nurses, midwives, and allied health staff, with more than 265 staff attending surge training in Intensive Care, Emergency and Immunisation specialties to provide additional capacity to care for patients.


Lismore Base Hospital is the primary receiving hospital for COVID-19 cases requiring hospitalisation in the District, having recently undergone significant redevelopment to provide a new Emergency Department and Intensive Care Unit, as well as other general hospital wards. These refurbishments have also delivered more single room capacity across the facility. Our other major hospitals in the District also have trained staff and the necessary equipment to cater for COVID patients if required as the pandemic evolves.


Between mid-2012 and mid-2021, NNSWLHD increased its workforce by an additional 1,219 FTE staff - an increase of 32.3 per cent including 211 more doctors 461 more nurses and midwives and 141 more allied health staff.


Message received by a registered nurse in NSW on 13 December 2021:


via @vintage_nurse


Northern NSW Local Health District, media release excerpt, 16 October 2021:


Visiting restrictions at hospitals across Northern NSW Local Health District are being eased slightly to allow visitors back into health facilities in a staged approach.


A patient may have one visitor once a day for one hour, between the hours of 1pm and 6pm.


Visitors must be at least 12 years of age, and must have be fully vaccinated with two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.


Visitors will need to carry evidence of their vaccination status on entry to the health facility, and must wear a surgical mask while on site.


Acting Chief Executive, Northern NSW Local Health District, Lynne Weir said people should continue to keep up to date with contact tracing alerts, and be vigilant against any symptoms of COVID-19 so they do not attend a health facility if they feel unwell.


People must not visit if they have any COVID-19 symptoms, are a close contact of a confirmed case (or are within their isolation period), live in a household with a person who is currently isolating, or if they are waiting for a COVID-19 test result,” Ms Weir said.

People also must not visit if they have been to case locations in NSW, interstate affected areas or New Zealand in the past 14 days.”



NOW


The Guardian, 7 January 2022:


One of New South Wales’ major regional hospitals had to source its own triage tent, is sending Covid tests six hours away due to a lack of space for its own diagnosis machine, and has had positive patients wait 30 hours to be transferred to a designated hospital for those with the virus.


Doctors at the Tweed hospital, which is 1km from the Queensland border in northern NSW and serves a hinterland that includes Byron Bay, are even donning personal protective equipment to drive home, in their own cars, asymptomatic Covid-positive patients because taxis won’t take them.


Kristin Ryan-Agnew, president of the local branch of the Nurses and Midwives Association and a senior nurse at the hospital, said local Covid cases were tripling daily, much faster than the 5o% growth in new cases reported for NSW as a whole on Wednesday.


As a result of increased presentations to Tweed’s emergency department, nurses were doing “double shifts every day” with one day off before resuming the toil. “They’re going to fall over in a screaming heap,” she said. “They will not be able to manage.”


Eighteen staff, many of them senior, have resigned since December out of a roster of about 150, citing burnout and the better conditions offered over the border.


Queensland offers $1,800 a year for nurses’ education, a Covid bonus – both absent in NSW – and higher wages, Ryan-Agnew said.


“They were really top-notch, really good quality staff, and they can walk up to the Gold Coast and they’ll just completely snaffle them.”


As Guardian Australia reported on Wednesday, nurses at Lismore Base hospital – the destination for Tweed’s Covid patients needing treatment – are also struggling to cope with a surge in medical needs.


The Tweed hospital is buckling under spiking demand for care and a lack of trained staff and appropriate equipment. A senior manager, for instance, had to phone around themselves and then purchase the triage tent prior to Christmas after months of pleading to the health department, Ryan-Agnew said.


The tent, though, remains far from adequate, with no toilet, forcing potentially Covid-positive patients – and anyone waiting for PCR testing to cross the border – to traipse through the main hospital lobby.


You can have people with heart conditions, sick kids, elderly, frail, all sitting there waiting to be seen, and you’ve got a potential Covid patient walking through the waiting room,” Ryan-Agnew said.


Patients with chest and severe abdominal pain, septic children and adults should be in beds not a tent without nursing care, staff said. Earlier this week, one Covid patient had to wait 17 hours before being transferred to Lismore, while another patient had to wait 30 hours before being moved on Wednesday.


The nurse manager shares office space and air-conditioning with two beds set aside for Covid patients with no air-locked space for changing PPE.


We have bottles of hand sanitiser sitting on top of overflowing bins, flapping Covid tent flaps compromising PPE,” another staff member, who requested anonymity, said.


We also continue to struggle getting adequate PPE and supplies, certain masks run out, no hair coverings and no disposable blood pressure cuffs.”


The triage tent sourced by a senior manager at Tweed hospital.
Photograph: Supplied










Read the full story here.


The Guardian, 8 January 2022:


Staff at the hospital serving tourist mecca Byron Bay in northern New South Wales say the facility is under “extreme strain”, with Covid-positive patients left in bays behind curtains and one patient waiting 45 hours to be transported to the region’s designated Covid hospital.


As many as 100 people a day are arriving at the Byron Central hospital, stretching staff already depleted by Covid-forced absences. The Byron area had a double-vaccination rate of about 85% as of 20 December, one of the lowest in NSW.


Healthcare workers collecting information from the public at a Covid testing site in Sydney


The hospital’s single isolation room was taken up by one Covid patient for almost two days earlier this week before being transported. “We are constantly being crippled by a lack of transfer options” with ambulances often unavailable because of their own shortages, a senior staffer who requested anonymity said.


We have a positive pressure room also that is being used as an isolation room and another room which we can close an actual door on,” the hospital worker said. “These are often all taken up, so we have Covid-positive patients in bays behind curtains because we can’t get people to where they need to be in a timely manner.”


As reported this week by Guardian Australia, northern NSW hospitals are under increasing strain at the designated Covid hospital at Lismore and at the bigger Tweed hospital near the border with Queensland.


Byron’s challenges are made worse by the loss of medical staff who have refused the government’s Covid vaccination mandate, and its proximity to communities with relatively large anti-vaccination support.


The region also has a relatively high number of cases per 1,000 people, with another 1,154 Covid cases in northern NSW in the latest 24-hour reporting period.


Northern NSW Local Health District website:


Hospital Visitors: Changes and Restrictions


Visitor restrictions are in place to protect patients, staff and visitors at our hospitals and health facilities.


Visitors are now restricted at all hospitals and health facilities in Northern NSW.

Exemptions will be considered on a case by case basis for compassionate or extenuating circumstances, for example in the case of palliative care.

Women accessing birthing services can continue to nominate one support person (participant in care) during her labour, birth and post-birth.

For outpatient appointments and community services, telehealth appointments are being utilised where possible.

All patients and visitors are required to wear a mask when entering a health facility.


As a precautionary measure ALL visitors will be screened on entry and will be required to check in using the QR code and provide evidence of their COVID-19 vaccination.


You will also be asked:


Do you have any COVID-19 symptoms?

Have you been identified as a close contact of a COVID-19 case in the past 14 days?

Have you returned from overseas in the past 14 days?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you will not be permitted to enter the facility.



Wednesday 16 June 2021

Alleged 70 per cent hazard reduction burn over two days planned for the biodiverse Billinudgel Nature Reserve in June 2021


Echo NetDaily, 11 June 2021:


Local Minjungbal Indigenous leaders are asking the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) to consult with them over a planned hazard reduction burn at Billinudgel Nature Reserve but a scheduled meeting was cancelled by NPWS. 

Billinudgel Nature Reserve where the hazard reduction
burn is planned by National Parks and Wildlife Service.




The hazard reduction burn was originally scheduled for the Billinudgel Nature Reserve on 3 June with neighbours being informed by letter on 2 June.


We got notification that Billinudgel was going to have a hazard reduction burn which gave me time to get in touch with NPWS to discuss some options and ask them to sit down with traditional owners to look at cultural issues in the reserve,’ said Rachael Cavanagh, a Minjungbal woman and traditional owner that covers the Billinudgel Nature Reserve.


Rachael said a meeting was originally set up but was then cancelled by the NPWS who said that they would only speak to the Tweed Byron Aboriginal Land Council (TB ALC).


They are not the traditional owners,’ Rachael pointed out. ‘Everyone deserves a voice. We are on the Native Title claim for the Five Rivers and the Tweed Bundjalung people. We are the traditional owners who hold the cultural knowledge on the land values. We still have fire law that has been continued in our family,’ she told The Echo. 

Billinudgel Nature Reserve.



NPWS legislation states that they need to engage with traditional owners and knowledge holders. By their own legislation they are supposed to meet all registered parties.’


Rachael has been a fire fighter for 20 years with the Queensland National Parks and Forestry Corporation and is engaged with the Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation.


I am in a senior leadership team for National Fire Sticks Alliance. We support and build capacity with Indigenous groups nationally to support cultural fire practices and traditional land management for people on country. We look at the whole picture.’


Having been denied the option to meet with NPWS Rachael told The Echo that their lawyer has now sent a letter to NPWS to seek a meeting between the traditional owners and NPWS in relation to the burn.


Pretty much our family are fighting to be at the table and be part the discussion,’ she said.


They are planning to for a 70 per cent hazard reduction burn over two days which means it will be very hot, raging and overall health of the forest and the cultural values will be at risk, the understory will be and the canopy will be scorched, the animals will have nowhere to go to.


Regardless of whether it is Billinudgel or Cudgen. I will be fighting to have a say over the management of Minyungbal Country.’


Regardless of whether it is Billinudgel or Cudgen. I will be fighting to have a seat at the table.’…... 



BACKGROUND


Billinudgel Nature Reserve was created in April 1996. It's current size is 789 ha. Approximately 75% of the Reserve is within Byron Shire with the remainder in Tweed Shire in the NSW Northern Rivers region.


The Reserve protects the following features

· a large tract of natural lowland coastal vegetation, a significant remnant in an otherwise highly modified environment; 

· an extensive wetland containing Melaleuca swamp forest; 

· a diversity of habitat which supports a wide range of fauna and flora including rare, threatened, significant and migratory species; 

· Aboriginal sites and landscapes of significance; and 

· features of scientific interest. 


In the 2016 Byron Coast Comprehensive Koala Plan of Management the North Byron Koala Management Area encompasses an area of approximately 2,814ha located to the north of the Brunswick River and includes the Billinudgel Nature Reserve along with the localities of South Golden Beach, Ocean Shores and Billinudgel.

localities of South Golden Beach, Ocean Shores and Billinudgel as indicated by Figure 3 of the


Northern Rivers Region Billinudgel, Marshalls Creek, Jinangong, and Brunswick Heads (north) Nature Reserves Fire Management Strategy (Type 2) 2016 at: