Flood review reveals flaws in handling of disaster

More than 14,000 homes were inundated across Brisbane during last summer's floods. Photo / APN

Queensland's seven-week, A$15 million ($18.8 million) commission of inquiry into the floods that killed 35 people last summer and inundated 70 per cent of the state has provided the first coherent picture of efforts to manage one of Australia's worst natural disasters.

The commission's interim report yesterday exposed mistakes and flaws in the state's response, including problems with the use of SMS texting and social media that will provide important lessons for other disaster management authorities.

But it concluded that, overall, the system worked effectively and without need for fundamental reform.

The commission's findings will be important for Premier Anna Bligh's Labor Government, which has another wet season to endure before facing voters in an election early next year.

Bligh's stock rose during her handling of the crisis but has since plunged, with polls predicting a crushing victory by the Opposition Liberal National Party.

The unofficial political truce maintained over the handling of the floods has now ended, and Bligh can expect searing attacks based on failings reported by the commission, especially the management of the big Wivenhoe flood mitigation dam outside Brisbane.

The commission recommended that, unlike in the last wet season, authorities take early action to reduce its water level to 75 per cent of capacity if the Bureau of Meteorology predicts another summer of similarly heavy rain.

During the crisis more than 14,000 homes were flooded across Brisbane amid criticism of the dam's management and earlier reluctance to lower its level, heavily influenced by the need to ensure water security after years of drought.

The bureau's first forecasts for the summer will be produced next month, and Bligh said yesterday that she would accept all recommendations from the commission, guaranteeing that those needed before the wet season would be implemented in time.

"The commission has certainly made some sobering findings," she said. "I give this commitment on behalf of the Queensland Government, in relation to every single one ofthe recommendations that apply tothe Queensland Government, they will be fully implemented."

The commission accepted that no disaster management system could have fully dealt with the crisis that overwhelmed Queensland as Australia experienced a merging of the second-strongest La Nina event in almost a century with an unusually strong monsoon.

Massive areas of the state were inundated before Christmas, continuing into January and erupting in the flash floods of January 10 that raged through Toowoomba, killing two, and down the eastern slopes of the Great Dividing Range to the Lockyer Valley.

Floodwaters killed 16 in the valley before sweeping through Ipswich and into Brisbane.

Outside Brisbane, water authorities had been debating the management of the Wivenhoe dam, built after the disastrous 1974 floods but never,the commission said, designed to completely contain a deluge of suchscale.

Proposals to reduce the dam's level had been considered as early as October, and urged again in December by irrigators who said 20-30 per cent of capacity was necessary as a buffer against flooding and the need for a sudden, potentially devastating, release of water.

The commission found there had been no clear understanding between the different water authorities involved, which seemed "incapable" of agreeing on their roles, and that any decision on dam levels must be made by the minister.

The commission said SMS texting of flood warnings had advantages, but at times suffered from delays that had resulted in areas being inundated before the warnings arrived, and in other cases had not been able to provide sufficient information.