Infamous hailstorm’s legacy
When the storm lashed parts of Toowoomba in January 1976, it was not prepared. We are now.
AS THE horses thundered home down the final stretch at Clifford Park, a disaster the size and scale of which Toowoomba had never seen was unfolding across town.
No warning of any kind - no green sky or building winds - gave any indication of the looming weather event.
Families were outside enjoying the sun, and punters lined the final furlong at the racecourse.
It was the afternoon of January 10, 1976, a day that for many still lives in memory, four decades on.
Historical archives are littered with references to the mammoth hailstorm which fired iced missiles into 5500 homes in a 5km wide path north from Middle Ridge to Harlaxton.
More than 9400 homes were in what would become known as the disaster zone.
The hail stones propelled by high winds punched through roofs, tearing tiles from fixtures and shattering windows.
Prized gardens were decimated, and 120 people were treated by paramedics; the city’s power supply was shut off, and hospitals were disrupted.
But the terror that smashed into the 5km zone barely registered across town where only a light trickle of rain threatened to disrupt afternoon plans in the sun.
The extent of the damage dawned not just on the city’s residents spared the worst but on the authorities tasked with immediate house repairs, made worse by heavy rains from Cyclone David.
Historical documents and The Chronicle archives tell of the fallout which followed the hailstorm, including the overwhelming onus put on the State Emergency Services to source and fix tarpaulins to ravaged homes.
The Toowoomba City Council, as it was known then, formed the Welfare Co-ordinating Committee in the days after the storm and acted as a conduit of information but without any real authority to organise repair works or deliver financial aid.
Liaising with the State Government, SES and voluntary groups, the committee launched a council appeal and raised $33,000 for victims.
“However in the first month after the hailstorm this organisation was unable to distribute the funds since it faced a problem common to all the organisations: how to identify the victims needing aid,” Sally Leivesley wrote in the 1977 study Toowoomba: Victims and Helpers in an Australian Hailstorm
Disaster after the storm.
The council collaborated with Legacy and other groups to try and identify those in need and deliver financial help, but a new concern was emerging.
Thirteen days after the storm the SES wound up its operations in Toowoomba with its volunteer crews going back to work.
Hundreds of people remained in need of tarpaulins and help despite the exhaustive efforts of the SES and other groups.
“There were others also who were suffering from illness directly or indirectly attributable to the effects of the storm and the
severe weather which followed,” Leivesley wrote.
“Some victims were described as being too proud to seek help and others confused to the point of disorientation.”
The mental well-being of victims became a key concern of the State Disaster Unit which formed in Toowoomba a month after the hailstorm.
The unit became responsible for overseeing repair works, financial assistance and the emotional well-being of residents - a precursor to the modern day government response to Queensland disasters.