Twenty-four years on, he still lives in the same unit on Pioneer Road, Towradgi. Mr Field pulled out a snap lock bag marked '1998 Wollongong Floods', full of photographs of his home that became filled with murky waters.

"It was terrible," Mr Field said. "I'm not religious, but it was rain of biblical proportions."

Between August 16 and 17, 1998, 375 millimetres of rain lashed the city with rain gauges in some suburbs recording more than 400 millimetres.

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One person died who was swept away in a creek, as torrents damaged thousands of homes and isolated the city for days.

Emergency services were caught out in the wild weather, dragging people from the waters.

Mr Field said on August 17, himself and his parents evacuated to higher ground in a nearby unit after State Emergency Service members knocked on their door.

He said the waist-high water was "running like a river".

It took six months to totally clean up their unit, with all furniture thrown away and carpet totally replaced. Mr Field still remembers the smell.

He said neighbouring flats were demolished due to the damage.

The night of extreme rain saw around nine times the average rainfall for August descend in less than six hours.

Thirroul resident Danielle Foster recalls frantically picking up her three children from school just in the nick of time before Bulli Pass became blocked by a mudslide.

"I went out and got my eldest boy, and took the other two with me because I was afraid if I didn't get back home we all wouldn't be together," she said.

"It was just so quick, extreme."

They stayed confined to the home for three days waiting for the water to subside.

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The Illawarra has been battered with two massive wet weather events this year, with persistent heavy rain causing flash flooding across the region.

Mr Field felt the fear resurface as the familiar sound of rainfall came crashing on his roof top in July, which saw 800mm hit parts of the region across a few days.

"The feeling all came up again ... I was really worried the water was going to get through to the unit," he said. "Lucky it didn't."

In 1998, drains across the city simply couldn't cope with waters in some suburbs reaching waist height.

Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery, who was working as a police chaplain at the time, said the floods exposed the city's unpreparedness to deal with disasters of that scale.

"It subsequently highlighted our vulnerability to these sorts of intense rain events," Cr Bradbery said.

"Wollongong was originally was built on higher contours, a series of villages that are virtually linked up. It showed we had built in areas where today we would perhaps not allow.

Cr Bradbery added the city is in a "vastly more secure position" after tens of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure had been put in place to increase its flood resilience.

"Still today, Wollongong council has 13 water catchment areas that we monitor and continually upgrade and recalibrate in the light of rain events."

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