Safety Step’s hometown of Lismore was hit by a record flood this week. The rising waters also devastated the rest of the Northern Rivers region and other parts of Queensland and New South Wales states.
Lismore township is one of the worst-hit in all of Australia, with flooding breaking all records and devastating the town. Most businesses were completely submerged by the water, and the cleanup has only just begun.
At the moment, thankfully, the Safety Step factory at Rock Valley wasn’t too badly damaged — the flood diversion measures and infrastructure we’ve been recently improving saved us. We do have a small amount of water damage here or there, but nothing major. What we really need, though, is power. Most of Lismore and all of Rock Valley is without power, and our cellphone reception and internet is patchy at best.
For now, our factory is not operational. We’re working on getting a generator in order to get the factory back online, but unsurprisingly generators are hard to find at the moment. Once we have power, we will restart manufacturing in a limited capacity, and then plan to return to full operation once we stabilise our power supply and all of our staff are able to safely access our worksite again.
Speaking of … our staff have all been badly affected by the natural disaster. Some have lost their homes, others have been completely cut-off from the rest of the world for days, without power and dwindling food supplies. Thankfully, the waters are receding and we’re managing to get out and re-stock in some ways. We’re all safe, but a little shattered by the whole event.
To those customers whose orders we are currently processing: please be patient with us as we try and get operational once more. It’s almost certain that there will be some courier & freighting delays throughout this part of Australia, as most companies have lost their warehouses and delivery fleets. We’ve got a plan in place to deal with this, but there may be some bumps along the way over the coming weeks and months as Australia rebuilds.
Our staff are also pitching in and helping clean up the Lismore township, and we’ll be doing this alongside getting the factory up and running.
There’s some devastating news coming out every day about things that people have lost, sometimes even their lives. We’ll post some news links below. Lismore will take a lot of effort and time to get back to what it was, but we’re committed to our part of Australia and do what we can to be part of the rebuild.
Take care, everyone.
The Safety Step Team.