Church communities across the far north of the country are boiling water to drink after access to essential goods was affected by ex-Tropical Cyclone Narelle. Source: The Catholic Leader.
In Weipa, Queensland, St Joseph’s Parish School principal Katherine Porter said people were boiling water because authorities detected E coli, including at the school.
Schools were not allowed to boil water, so Ms Porter said they had to manually bring in water to the school.
“I couldn’t have done it without my staff,” she said. “I have the most amazing people … and they came in on their Sunday day off.”
Ms Porter said there had been challenges with delivering essential goods like food to Weipa, as the community received it all by barge.
In Darwin, the community was inundated by unrelenting rainfall in the lead-up to Cyclone Narelle.
Darwin Bishop Charles Gauci said access to food and clean water in the Northern Territory has been a challenge, as water systems, towns and highways were inundated by the flood, leaving people with no choice but to boil water to drink.
“Ironically, the pump drowned and couldn’t function properly,” Bishop Gauci said. “We had to watch our water for a day or two” while the purification process was being restored.
Bishop Gauci said the impact of the cyclone would be “huge”.
“We are a missionary diocese and our resources are not very big,” he said.
“Our Catholic education system is being challenged, of course, housing teachers, spending money on that.
“We don’t know to what extent the insurance will cover our situation.”
Bishop Gauci said the region experienced one of the heaviest wet seasons in years.
He could “see the stress” on the faces of the people, and the impact of leaving their homes “wearing them down”.
It has been a traumatic time for the people as “they’ve lost everything,” he said.
Bishop Gauci attended emergency management meetings yesterday and said, “We need to have short term and eventually start talking long-term strategies”.
Organisations such as Catholic Care, the St Vincent de Paul Society and the Knights of Malta have been in action, doing the best they can to help people, he said.
Bishop Gauci encouraged the community to continue being “resilient, working together, supporting each other”, as a “church in action”.
FULL STORY
Communities in Weipa and Darwin call for prayers as water contaminated and food access interrupted (By Georgia Whiteley, The Catholic Leader)
