Radio news on Australian flooding

Thanks to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, excellent media coverage of the flooding is available here in France.
[Click the banner to access their streamed site.]

We're hearing an awesome new expression, "evacuation centers", which didn't exist back in my childhood days in Australia. In general, the news is reassuring in the sense that the authorities, citizens and media people all appear to be acting calmly and firmly, with no signs of excessive consternation or panic. The only thing that surprises me in the many flood images I've seen is that people often appear to be half-naked, barefoot and generally "under-dressed" for such an emergency. Why don't they at least wear rubber boots (to prevent them wounding their feet in the muddy waters)?

BREAKING NEWS: By tomorrow morning (Wednesday, local time)—according to a forecast in Tuesday's Daily Examiner—the swollen Clarence will have reached a maximum height of 7 meters at Grafton, which is just 1.2 meters beneath the top of the levee at Prince Street. Everything should be OK as long as there's no more rain, and the embankment holds.