Fires, floods and fury
Tropical Cyclone Debbie’s impact was felt in Toowoomba but with main differences
AS TROPICAL Cyclone Debbie crossed the Queensland coast, her impacts were felt in the Toowoomba region in two ways.
In the days immediately after the weather phenomenon, specialist Queensland Fire and Emergency Services and Rural Fire Service officers based in the Garden City were called up to relieve fatigued crews in one of the hardest hit disaster zones.
For Toowoomba, that meant a rotation of five officers each being deployed along the coast, including Rockhampton.
Their job was to co-ordinate the relief and recovery effort, shore up supplies and ensure the right response was delivered across the Beef City.
For a week at a time, the Toowoomba crews facilitated support from the Incident Control Centre in Rockhampton, with safety a core aspect of their daily operations.
The team before them had the gruelling mission of swift water rescues and more monitoring of the disaster area before the full extent of Debbie’s wrath was revealed.
Back home in Toowoomba, more than 640km southwest of Rockhampton, the weather turned miserable but the city was spared any kind of extreme damage seen on the coast.
Some localised flooding was reported in Warwick and the Lockyer Valley, and the State Emergency Service conducted welfare checks for some residents.
Rainfall predictions were constantly changing, from 10mm over a day, to 35mm in as little as a few hours to a deluge of 150mm in 24 hours.
Despite QFES crews being deployed to the coastal areas, the Toowoomba region was backed up and serviced by remaining crews.
When the forecast deluge failed to recreate the devastation of the coast in Toowoomba, the city sighed in collective relief.
As winter approached and the dry conditions continued, the fire risk pushed higher resulting in bans enforced across the region.
The dry heat increased the risk with fire services responding to a myriad of incidents from hot exhaust pipes on ride-on mowers sparking grass fires which tore through hectares, to controlled hazard reduction burns being pushed forward by weeks in an effort to pre-empt a potentially deadly fire season.
The services worked as a team, relying on the skills unique to each branch.
QFES Inspector Peter Bradow, soon after his deployment to Rockhampton, said: “No matter what uniforms they have on, they worked so well together to achieve unified work.”