Albury City Council has applied for emergency declaration status to get funding to help cover reparation costs to its community and public assets, but individuals are dealing with the clean up and loss of their personal property by themselves.

In Thurgoona's Murray Park estate, which sits below the Corry's Road Environmental Protection Zone reserve, an estimated 30 residences were flooded.

Mark Baker and his wife Nancy Walters, whose house and backyard at the top of the estate's Pioneer Place was flooded, say the intense rainfall caused the dam on the reserve above them to burst and, without adequate drainage, the torrent of water ran down the hill into their and their neighbours properties.

Mr Baker said he was angry.

"I'm pumped up, because this is brand new estate, it's seven years old ... but there's absolutely zero stormwater drainage from that reserve into the estate," he said.

Mr Baker said the water was banked up more than a metre high on the outside of his fence with nowhere to go but straight through their backyard and house.

"We've lost all of our landscaping fully right around and the floor inside the house is starting to lift ... it's probably no more than $25,000 damage," he said.

Mrs Walters said their neighbours on all sides had experienced flooding in the storms, including Natasha and Brian Raybould who appeared in The Border Mail last week when their house was left stinking by floodwaters after the first of the major storms.

"The water was over the whole road, that's how much water was coming up," Mrs Walters said.

"Because they've done all these houses at the back, there's nowhere for the water to go, before all these houses the water would have just found its natural course and found a way and gone down, but now because it's all built up the water's got to go somewhere and it's just obviously pushed through [our place] because it was the lowest point.

"It was very strong, it took me ages to push open the side gate to let the water out, so I didn't realise how high it was, but my whole backyard was flooded.

"I didn't even have a dry towel in the house, because we were up until 4.30am mopping up the floors, because the floors were two inches under water."

Mr Baker said a council worker had been out to inspect the problem and listen to his concerns, but when The Border Mail spoke to Albury City's chief executive Frank Zaknich earlier this week he said he wasn't aware of that particular case.

"Stormwater design and capacity is something that's looked at really closely during the development stages in Thurgoona," he said.

"So design should meet its operating requirements, most of the time when we do get a one-in-100-year event other things can happen that the structure of the system wasn't designed for, so we need to be mindful of that too.

"We'll certainly look into it, once we get that detail."

Another resident in the Murray Park Estate Chris Pidd of Paddlesteamer Court, which runs parallel to Pioneer Place, was also flooded.

"It would appear that the top of the dam came apart and we didn't know that until we woke up and put our feet down and realised that it was wet underfoot," he said.

Mr Pidd said the flood had caused about $25,000 worth of damage.

"In my mind it's kind of a lack of oversight, when the developers were given this [estate] or bought it, there wasn't necessarily the thought put into where the water might end up if we had one of these one-in-100-year type events," he said.

"Of course, whatever's happening with the climate, that's two 100-year events in a week, it's traumatic, it's really hard.

"The tricky thing is the stuff you can't replace. There's a chair we have that's an heirloom from my wife's family and it's probably repairable, but what if it wasn't?

"And people in here would have lost things that are priceless, books or ephemeral items from their family that are now gone, and that's the sad thing."

Mr Pidd, who is also a suicide prevention worker, said the psychological impacts of the storms shouldn't be underestimated.

"The emotional part of this story is very important, I think as important as the water," he said.

"What people have to understand, what bureaucrats, engineers have to understand, is the emotional impact is enormous and it doesn't stop when the rain stops or when GIO pay the insurance bill, it doesn't stop then.

"There's still this emotional charge every time it rains, 'is it going to happen again?'"

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Mr Pidd said people were experiencing a grief response.

"That's anger, sadness, it's fear, it's all those bits and pieces and we're right smack bang in the middle of that grief response at the moment," he said.

"We've had assessors in and things and we're beginning to look at what some of the bills look like and we're beginning to rebuild our lives back after this event and it's hard."

Mr Pidd said the flooding added to the pressures of anyone already in a heightened state.

"Anybody who was already vulnerable, who was already dealing with other crap or whatever's going on, then this just adds to all of that stuff," he said.

"If you think about what we've been going through these last two years in terms of the losses we've already suffered through COVID, you then lose access to your house, you lose that connection to your house, and that fear that comes, it absolutely compounds it and it makes it that bit more difficult to deal with.

"So we just need to watch out for each other and council has a place for that in terms of rebuilding community.

"So when council starts to deal with us and starts to work with us, they need to be really mindful that we're all going through a grief and loss process."

Mr Pidd said the community wanted to see action to know their concerns were being heard.

"We need the drains digging, so that if it happens again, I want to see the water going down the drain into the Murray or somewhere else," he said.

"The best thing council can do is just keep the information flowing to us all, in whatever shape we need it.

"I want to see council having some respect over that emotional response, and I think council has already done a good job of that.

"We just need to see some action now and action with care."

Mr Pidd also encouraged individuals to look after themselves.

"Make sure you're feeding yourself well and make sure you're doing some things that make you feel good," he said.

"Get out and go for a walk...keep connected to your friends as much as you can ... we criticise social media, but actually social media has an important place in this time, which is keeping us connected.

"Be there for your neighbours, as a community we'll be stronger out of this because we've gotten to know each other just that little bit better than what we did before and that's actually really important."

Mr Pidd said the community needed a moment to breathe and rebuild itself and stop attacking itself looking for blame.

"[It's] not a useful thing; in the end people will either accept responsibility or they won't," he said.

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