Managing the Brisbane Floods Disaster

Brisbane.
Over the next couple of days, I’m at the Australia New Zealand Disaster & Emergency Management Conference (ANZDMC), where Jean and I will present our research into the uses of Twitter in the Christchurch earthquake later today. We begin with a keynote from Assistant Commissioner Peter Martin from the Queensland Police Service, though, who was District Disaster Coordinator for the Brisbane-based response to the 2011 floods.

From late November 2010, Queensland experienced some very heavy rain, and many rivers across the state reached record flood levels, this was worsened by Cyclone Tasha in north Queensland by the end of December. On 10 January, Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley experienced devastating flash flooding, and early in February Cyclone Yasi hit towns in far north Queensland. This also had substantial effects on statewide infrastructure. 98% of the state were affected.

The January floods in south-east Queensland began with major flash flooding in Toowoomba; later on that day, Lockyer Valley communities were devastated by flash flooding. In Brisbane, between 11 and 15 January, some 11,900 homes were inundated, and another 14,700 affected; 2,500 business were inundated, and another 2,500 affected. This also severely affected city infrastructure, of course. Peter has very good things to say about the emergency response by Brisbane City Council, in fact.

Peter’s role under the Disaster Management Act is to chair the District group coordinating government and non-government agencies in the Brisbane district. This is about information coordination and dissemination from local through to federal level, but also about resource management (Peter has the power to take over property, vehicles, and locations where required, for example). This means considering potential impacts across the whole district community (beyond Brisbane city itself), to access and distribute resources, and to set disaster management priorities. The management group includes senior representatives from all relevant organisations.

Examples for where these powers needed to be exercised in the Brisbane floods include dealing with Drift restaurant (a floating moored structure which could not move in its own right and which was likely to cause damage if it broke free); Peter took the decision to clear people from the site, and to allow the structure to sink and thereby stay in place (and potentially be salvaged).

A similar problem was posed by the party boat The Island, on the other side of the river; it was independently mobile, but low-powered and therefore likely to be unable to resist the flow of the river water if it broke free – the boat needed to remain fuelled and well-tethered in order to continue to battle against the flow, but sinking the vessel was also considered. Similarly, the Moggill ferry had to be anchored in place, with a 20-tonne anchor flown in by the army.

Lessons learnt include the need to develop strong situational awareness; the need to have the key capabilities represented around the discussion table; to have commanders’ intent; to debrief effectively after the crisis; to invest in the time to document decisions and events; and to develop strong relationships of trust. This was also important when the event was reviewed by the Queensland Commission of Inquiry subsequently, of course.