In the grip of the river serpent
In the grip of the river serpent | The Australian
Flood victims salvage their possessions in the Brisbane suburb of Rosalie. Picture: David Kelly Source: The Australian
IN May 1974, Charles Barton, then Queensland's co-ordinator general, warned the community against putting its blind faith in the mooted Wivenhoe Dam to save Brisbane from a repeat of the flood that had devastated the city four months earlier.
"When the Wivenhoe Dam is built, don't let us have a Wivenhoe Syndrome develop in the community," Barton told fellow bureaucrats at a meeting of government agencies conducting a postmortem on the flood. "For Wivenhoe Dam, while it will greatly reduce the flooded areas, will still leave areas subject to severe flooding."
Modelling done following the construction of the dam 50km up-river from Brisbane in the late 1970s and early 80s predicted that if the 1974 flood was repeated, the water level would be 2m lower at the Port Office in the city's CBD and 5.5m lower at Jindalee in the western suburbs.
If nothing else, those estimates provide the starkest of pointers to the scale of the disaster that inundated the Queensland capital in the early hours of this morning. Dam or no dam, the flood that swamped more than 50 Brisbane suburbs obliterated the 1974 high-water marks.
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In opening the dam in October 1985, then premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen boasted that it would act as a buffer against future disasters, but that was a promise based on the premise that its primary function was as a flood barrier not as a water storage facility.
But as the 1974 catastrophe receded into history and the deluge of Cyclone Wanda gave way to the long, dry years of El Nino, Wivenhoe came to be seen in a far different light. As the unrelenting drought shrank it to less than 20 per cent of its capacity, every drop of water was deemed to be precious. That's why a month ahead of today's disaster, the dam was full in terms of its water reticulation capacity, even if it still had a long way to go in flood prevention terms.
In the weeks and months ahead, serious questions are certain to be asked about why the Wivenhoe release valve wasn't opened much earlier. But yesterday, as floodwaters built menacingly in the upper reaches of Brisbane River, the city's residents had more pressing matters on their mind.
Piece by piece, the city's infrastructure was being dismantled around them. The greatest natural disaster in the city's 186-year history, as Premier Anna Bligh described it, might have been unfolding before their eyes but the day had a surreal feel to it. As catastrophes go, this one was of the creeping variety, as the coils of the serpentine Brisbane River slowly ensnared the city in an anaconda-like death grip.
There was an eerie calm before the storm, except that the storm had long passed and the sun was shining. Those of us who lived through the 1974 floods and for years afterwards woke up sweating at the sound of rain drumming on the roof watched in trepidation but for the young of the city, it was a time for sightseeing and even for a dry run, as it were.
Bizarrely, a crew at the New Farm shopping centre was hard at work pumping out the centre's flooded basement carpark. The whole scene had a King Canute feel to it until one of the workmen explained that they were just practising for what they would need to do in the coming days once the flood had receded.
One nine-year-old, Sarah, seemingly did have the power to stem the tide. Just before abandoning her Brookfield home she left a note in the window commanding the flood to back off. "Come no closer or retreat!" she demanded. "Stop now!" Her house was left untouched.
Elsewhere in the city, others without her powers were making more pragmatic arrangements, filling sandbags to build optimistic barriers around homes and businesses. Sand, as can be imagined, was soon in short supply and not even the bunkers at the St Lucia golf course were safe as residents desperately made the most of a suddenly precious resource.
How thin the veneer of civilisation turned out to be as Brisbane was quickly and methodically reduced to the level of a Third World village. Street by street power was cut off by Energex crews as the water encroached, not to be restored until the flood waters recede and it is safe to do so.
All buses to the city centre were cut off, trains continued to run but only sporadically, all non-essential surgery in Brisbane's major hospitals was cancelled and military demolition experts were dispatched to the Moggill ferry - still hanging on by one of the two ropes it uses to help ferry vehicles across the river - to determine whether the safest option was simply to sink it.
Clearly, while many of the other lessons of the 1974 flood had not been learned, there was still enough corporate memory to recall the runaway barge that broke its mooring and became wedged under the Centenary Bridge, causing damage that took years to repair. Similarly Bligh announced that the Island, an old ferry converted into a party fun ship, also could be scuttled to prevent it replicating the 1974 journey of the 67,000-tonne oil tanker Robert Miller that came so perilously close to demolishing a riverside block of luxury apartments.
It was an astonishing announcement for a politician to make and it was not the only one to pass Bligh's lips. But while she was making constant references to the resilience of Queenslanders in a crisis, it was not going unnoticed that she herself was rising to the challenge. Unquestionably, these past few days have been her finest as Premier and, in marked contrast to Prime Minister Julia Gillard who looked poised and polished beside her at a press conference yesterday - perhaps too much so - Bligh came across as human and compassionate.
She simply gave up fighting with her hair fringe and looked haggard at times, which is precisely what she should have been after a week of unrelenting trauma and tragedy. Even while she was acknowledging Brisbane's CBD had become a ghost town and would remain so for days, Bligh gave the impression she was totally in control. Certainly Channel Nine thought so, brusquely breaking off from a press conference being given by Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman to cut to her late afternoon press briefing.
Whatever other recriminations lie ahead, Bligh will not be failed for her performance as a communicator. Unlike in 1974 when police logs recorded three occasions when detailed warnings were not passed on, Bligh has kept the public fully informed through every grim day and development.
She did not hide the bad news, pointing out that the Brisbane of 2011, population of around two million, had changed a lot from the city of 37 years ago - population 911,000 - even if Yeronga, Newmarket and St Lucia, where most of the 14 victims of the 1974 disaster perished, were again the bellwether suburbs. More homes to evacuate, more people in peril.
And the crisis won't end when the tide goes down and the waters retreat. A number of southeast Queensland's sewage treatment plants have either been inundated or failed in recent days and raw sewage has infiltrated Brisbane's creeks and waterways, prompting Newman to warn residents, particularly those foolhardy enough to swim in floodwaters, that there is a risk of an outbreak of gastro-intestinal illnesses. Nor would any Queensland disaster be complete without a mosquito plague.
Yet, as Bligh observed, the people of Brisbane are holding up. So swamped was the SES by offers of help yesterday that it began redirecting would-be volunteers to local councils. Some 1500 spent most of yesterday filling sandbags.
But nothing could stop the inevitable as Brisbane overnight lived up to its own marketing tag as the River City. The floodwaters were remorseless, invading some 40,000 properties. By late yesterday more than 70,000 Brisbane residents were without power, more than 1500 roads partially or fully inundated.
Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser acknowledged the state's damage bill, already running at $6 billion before Brisbane joined the long list of disaster cities, would be astronomical.
"We are talking here of billions in terms of budget impact," Fraser told ABC TV.
How puny, in retrospect, does the $200 million bill from the 1974 floods now appear. Even adjusted to today's figures, that is still only $1.4bn.
Not for the first time, longtime Brisbanites are looking back on the horrors of 1974 and thinking they got off lightly.
Queensland floods: 8m high flash flood!
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