‘Epically failed’: SMS warnings took more than 12 hours to reach flooded Brisbane residents
Some Brisbane residents didn’t receive any warnings before their homes were flooded earlier this year because the alert system failed, a report has found.
Inspector-General of Emergency Management Alistair Dawson’s report into the February-March floods, which killed 13 people and damaged more than 9,000 homes and businesses, was published on Wednesday.
The review found the overloaded State Disaster Coordination Centre (SDCC) failed to issue timely alerts in Brisbane and some properties were inundated without warning.
Brisbane council’s Local Disaster Management Committee first asked for a low-level emergency alert to be texted to residents at 7.07pm on Sunday, 27 February.
It took 37 minutes for a council representative and an SDCC officer to agree on wording for the SMS, which was then delayed after a number of other councils made requests for more critical alerts.
Finally, there was an outage of the entire alert system for an hour on the morning of 28 February, which Telstra said was likely because it was “overloaded”.
Dawson found it took more than 12 hours to issue the first flood alert to Brisbane residents, by which time there had been more rainfall as the river approached a peak of 3.85m.
“Conditions changed significantly during this time,” his report said.
“A tidal cycle occurred in the Brisbane River and rainfall conditions also changed. This affected the relevance and need for the Emergency Alert campaign.
“Some residents in Brisbane reported receiving this message well after their properties were inundated.”
Brisbane’s lord mayor, Adrian Schrinner, said the report showed the emergency alert system operated by the state government “epically failed” during the flood.
“I am really concerned that little has been done to improve the National Emergency Alert system operated by state governments,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.
Queensland’s emergency services minister, Mark Ryan, said Brisbane council’s first attempt to send an alert had only come after it was clear flooding was occurring.
“It had been raining for a number of days,” he told reporters.
The report noted there was a lack of training and awareness among some local government staff about using the alert system, including character limits on messages.
“The Brisbane City Council last accessed the emergency alert training module ... in 2018,” Ryan said.
The report has called for a new process for requests for alerts to have “urgent approval and distribution without delay” to be implemented by 1 November.
Dawson also called for a review of the process, including requesting, composing, authorising and issuing messages, by the same date.
A review of the Queensland Emergency Alert Manual should also be conducted and completed by November next year, the report said.
The inspector-general also probed dam management, including at Wivenhoe Dam on the Upper Brisbane River.
Some media outlets criticised the dam’s operators, claiming water releases intensified flooding in the city.
However, Dawson found Wivenhoe was well managed and the timing of water releases mitigated the flood’s impact.
The report made a total of 19 recommendations which the government said were on track to be enacted.
The Bureau of Meteorology warned earlier this week of an increased risk of tropical cyclones, tropical lows and major flooding in Queensland in the coming months.