Wagga duty operations manager Eamonn Purcell, who has deployed to a raft of natural disasters in Australia and overseas in the last decade, will spend the next week working with a specialist team in the disaster-stricken area.

"We have to try and maintain normalcy in quite a challenging time," Inspector Purcell said.

"They have the same needs and the same illnesses and the same requirements as any other community."

The team was choppered into the region on Wednesday and then ferried across the swollen Hawkesbury River to set up a makeshift ED on the grounds of a mental health facility.

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Patients brought to the new ED, established in what was originally built as a stables in the 1800s, are either helicoptered out or taken across the river by the SES in a flood boat.

For the up to 7000 people cut off from family and supplies, there's an eerie sense of life going on even as the river rages over homes and property.

Babies are still being born, palliative care patients need special attention and chronic illness continues.

"We've had a number of maternity cases with people in labour, we've had people with chronic infections, palliative care patients that are deteriorating and need advanced care," Inspector Purcell said.

"The problem is the community doesn't have what they normally have, which is access to hospitals just across the river.

"We've managed to avoid having any births on the peninsula, as we're calling it."

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The team in North Richmond is comprised of Inspector Purcell, two nurses, two doctors and two critical and intensive care paramedics from across the state.

They expect to be there for seven days and are joined by local nurses volunteering after being cut off from their usual workplaces.

People needing emergency help call Triple 0 as usual, and if they need further treatment are brought to the field hospital, which was put together with beds from the existing facility across the grounds.

"If (paramedics) transport someone they bring them to us, we do a triage and emergency department-type procedures and we triage from there," Inspector Purcell said.

"We're making a staging point and stabilising them and sorting out whether they need to go right now and which way we can get them across (the river).

"We're working with really highly-motivated nurses and medical officers and it's good, you're certainly doing stuff you don't normally do as a paramedic, you're doing a lot more in emergency-type care, setting up drugs and using machines that you don't generally use because it's generally done in an ED by others."

Those left in the area have banded together, bringing help and looking for ways to assist after life as usual was put on hold.

"One of the patients yesterday, his daughter was in the RFS and we hadn't eaten all day .. and she without (us) even asking rang up the RFS and got meals organised, got sandwiches, got water and suddenly it arrived," Inspector Purcell said.

"So people have been really welcoming and helpful, it's been lovely."

Eyes remain on the Hawkesbury River, which is expected to receive more water as it makes its way from Crookwell and Goulburn.

"I think people are concerned that they don't know when they're going to have access outside their township ... about basic supplies and making sure they've got all the normal stuff that allows them to do their daily living - I would be too," Inspector Purcell said.

"People are having to make do in challenging circumstances unfortunately. But I'm sure that when the water goes down - we're hoping it's going to go down in the next four, five days - we'll get through it."

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