This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Bachelor to New South Wales, Jeremy

Zachus, the Waragamba Dam at 96%. That translates into risk.

Jeremy, a very good day to you in Australia.

As of Saturday morning your time, the Waragamba was 96% and the spillover was pushing water downstream where there was already an

enormous amount of flooding. There were parts that were told to evacuate.

Does that include your neighborhood of Sydney?

Good day to you.

G'd day, John.

I know I can say I was lucky I wasn't quite in the evacuation zone downstream here in Sydney or southern Sydney I should say but it was very close because the

Warwick Amber actually where it stops and where it starts to basically send water into the Sydney area is a floodplain.

So you can imagine the War of Gamba Dam is actually up in the Blue Mountains, so it's in the

mountains area just to the west of Sydney here and that's where it traps the water.

But when it spills

it comes straight down onto a floodplain that then flows into Sydney,

and especially southern Sydney here.

So the evacuation areas were only a little bit away from me and when I say a little bit away it was

only three or four miles away and luckily enough we didn't have any issues but a

spillover from the Warreagamba is dangerous in every way because the reality

is the Waragamba Dam is a massive structure and at

96% it is reaching the limits of its maximum capacity and when I say limits it's actually

also structural limits so it's not just physical water, which means that if there's

any more water behind it, there's the potential who can start to fracture, which is partly why not

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