No one can prepare themselves for what has happened in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley this week. Not for one moment do I propose that an event of such magnitude could be stopped or controlled in any significant form, by infrastructure such as dams. It was too much water in an urban area, extremely close to the crest of the range. In the Lockyer Valley it was the same scenario on the Eastern side of the range, only in a semi-urban rural area. It was nature in all its fury and the pictures are truly terrifying. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have lost family members and at a later stage we must offer what help, either financial or otherwise for the clean up. Now comes even more rain to fall on top of an already flooded river system and extend flood heights even further than what they were before.
One cannot fathom the fear that people must have felt as walls of water consumed their homes, washed away their belongings and in some cases, took their lives. What is really important now is that we do what we can to help.
The floods in the Lockyer and Toowoomba areas were so devastating because they were so out of proportion to what has happened in the past. The floods in Toowoomba went down the main street. It would be like seeing cars and trees in a roaring flood going down Canberra’s Northbourne Avenue.
To wake up in the morning and see that dozens of people are missing and at least 8 people are dead, is truly shocking. Though we hope and presume that many of the missing will be found safe. Every town becomes marked by an event; Canberra and Victoria by recent bushfires, Darwin by Cyclone Tracy and now Toowoomba will have part of its collective psyche affected by these floods.
The question that will be asked and the answer that will be demanded is “what can we do to prevent this from happening again”? In other topographies there are things that could be done to mitigate the effects of this, such as dams which would also store the water for the future beneficial commercial use. This option is not available when you live at the edge of the range and the floods predominately emanated from the city you live in. In fact the city straddles the range which is the watershed.
My role as Shadow Minister for Water is to try to develop the policies that go beyond empathy and provide some hope of a solution where a solution is possible. Unfortunately, it would appear that there is not much that could have been done to avoid a tragedy of this scale and suddeness. There was no reasonable expectation that this could happen, and I have heard some comment that these floods surpass, by some measure, the devastating 1974 floods.
On a positive note, it is humbling to see how Australians will pitch in and work for the common good when a crisis arises. In my small town no one needed to be asked to help, they just did it. No one was asked to fill sand bags, they just turned up. People came from everywhere to help and those who had a job worked twice as hard so that their extra efforts would alleviate the additional pains of others who were going through the trauma of the flood. It was done in good humour and with a beer at the end of the day. In the majority of cases, commercial terms were put aside and the terms of engagement were pro bono, gratia.
In St George we are devastated by what we see of the towns flooded further to the East. The resources that have been applied to one area now have to be spread from Rockhampton to Northern New South Wales and West to Dirranbandi.
Areas will have to become more self reliant with managing the floods in their district. As Brisbane evacuates areas, other remote towns remain in danger, such as Mungindi who expect their levy bank to be 1 metre below the expected flood height.
Closing on a positive note, I hear that even from the suburbs in Sydney, in places such as Cabramatta, tens of thousands of dollars have been raised. Australians will always back Australians.