Flood crisis spreads to five states
- The Australian
- January 15, 2011
EMERGENCY services across five states were stretched to breaking point last night, as Julia Gillard threw 1200 troops at the Queensland flood crisis.
This comes as fresh concern emerged that the management of Brisbane's main dam had contributed to the disaster.
Flood emergencies erupted in NSW and South Australia, and in Victoria more than 2000 people were forced to flee their homes after torrential rain hit the state.
As the floods crisis spread around the nation, engineering and hydrology sources told The Weekend Australian that the policy of the dam's operators to continue storing water near the maximum supply level - not including the dam's capacity for flood mitigation - for several months leading up to the crisis this week was a significant contributor to the major flood.
Allegations that the management of Wivenhoe Dam, which functions as a flood shield for Brisbane as well as its principal reservoir, are set to become a focus of the inquiry into the flooding disaster.
The emergency in Queensland now extends from the central coast centre of Rockhampton, where floodwaters are receding, to the devastated riverside suburbs of Brisbane, neighbouring Ipswich, west to Toowoomba and the Darling Downs community of Condamine and through to the southern border town of Goondiwindi.Premier Anna Bligh last night pledged this would be open and transparent, though she stopped short of a call by Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman for the inquiry to have royal commission powers.
Authorities in Victoria yesterday called on all 1000 residents of Carisbrook to evacuate to nearby Maryborough as the waters threatened homes.
As many as 50 homes were inundated in Beaufort, where the water reached waist deep in the streets, and homes in Charlton, northwest of Bendigo, were under grave threat, the State Emergency Service said.
The SES in South Australia last night warned residents of Naracoorte, 336km southeast of Adelaide, to prepare for potential flooding.
And in NSW, about 70 homes in the border township of Boggabilla, in the state's north, were surrounded by water last night, and water was flowing through the nearby Aboriginal settlement of Toomelah.
Ms Gillard, who yesterday toured the flood-ravaged Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane, said the coming weeks would be immensely challenging.
"There's going to be a lot to deal with, there's a lot of dirt, a lot of filth, a lot of mess that needs to be cleaned up and these 1200 defence personnel will be there as part of that clean-up effort in the coming weeks," the Prime Minister said.
"But what, of course, we know is that the work of recovery is going to take months and months and months beyond, and so I will be here, the government will be here . . . to assist the people of Queensland."
The commitment of 1200 troops is the biggest to domestic disaster relief since the Cyclone Tracy emergency in 1974.
Announcing that the official death toll in Queensland had risen to 16, Ms Bligh said 4436 people were now in emergency accommodation in Brisbane and communities to its west. To date, 17,500 homes had been flooded or isolated by floodwaters, along with 3000 business premises. As the clean-up in Brisbane began, hydrologist Aron Gingis, formerly of Monash University, criticised the policy of keeping Wivenhoe at maximum capacity, not including the dam's capacity for flood mitigation, in the lead-up to the deluge. He said it meant that the dam's buffer to absorb a huge inflow of water from extreme rainfall had been severely compromised.
The Queensland government-owned dam's operator, Seqwater, did not respond to written questions last night.
Ahead of this week's flooding, the massive volume of water in Wivenhoe rose to 190 per cent of its notional capacity, meaning nine-tenths of its capacity to absorb flooding had been soaked up.
At 200 per cent, authorities would have been faced with an uncontrolled release of water into the Brisbane River. Mr Gingis said Seqwater had "no right prior to the start of the wet season, when the forecasts were all pointing strongly to exceptional rainfall, to keep so much water in the dam".
"I tried to warn them about the coming disaster and to urge them before it was too late that they had to release much more water to give themselves more storage room for a big one.
"There is no doubt in my professional opinion that most of the flooding in Brisbane should have been avoided."
Mr Gingis said the dam's levels should have been taken down much more in the months before the extreme rainfall, and that this would have meant its operators would not have been forced to release huge volumes of water that made a significant contribution to the flood in the Brisbane River.
Ms Bligh confirmed yesterday that dam operators came "very close" to losing control of the massive Wivenhoe Dam at the peak of the flood crisis in Brisbane.
Asked late yesterday if she believed the strategy followed by the dam's operators in releasing water had been conducted appropriately, the Premier neither endorsed nor commended the strategy, saying it was a question for technical experts to examine.
"We came very close to an uncontrolled release, but it didn't actually get there," she said.
"Of course we were worried about that. You would much rather be in control of the dam than it being in control of itself.
"All of the advice that I have is that the dam has been managed exactly in the way it is meant to be and has worked in the way that it was originally envisaged, but I am not a hydrological engineer and I don't pretend to be and these are the questions we would look at in any review.
"Looking into the background of the event is something we will be doing, and we will be doing it in a public, transparent way so that people can participate and can understand what has happened."
After Lord Mayor Campbell Newman told The Australian on Thursday that a public inquiry into the floods disaster across Queensland was needed to ensure lessons were learned and public officials were accountable, Ms Bligh said she backed the call and that many answers were indeed needed.
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