TROPICAL DELUGE Council ‘too slow to act’ on drain fix
A WHITFIELD resident whose home was flooded in yesterday’s major downpour claims Cairns Regional Council is to blame for his damaged property.
Bill Searle spent yesterday clearing mud from inside his Hillview Crescent home, after the house had water gushing through it following the more than 200mm of rain that fell across the city in 24 hours.
Mr Searle claimed the water level rose due to a drain with narrow pipes running under the street, that was flagged with the council more than 12 months ago, needing to be fixed.
“(The council) hasn’t addressed it properly,” Mr Searle said.
“So in this heavy rain, the drain just overflowed with water over the street, down the street, straight into our house.”
A council infrastructure boss yesterday said they were aware of the issues and would move to rectify them as soon as possible.
Mr Searle estimated there had been about 4cm of water flowing through his home.
“Every room in the house is affected,” he said.
He said if the council did not take responsibility for the flooding, he would consider taking legal action.
“We want (the council) to pay our insurance excess and whatever other costs we have,” he said.
“If they say no, we’ll have to get a solicitor or something, I guess.”
Several landslides have been reported in the past decade in the vicinity of the street, which is at the foot of Mt Whitfield.
Fogarty St resident Nic O’Donnell, whose home is on the corner of Hillview Crescent, had a retaining wall crumble in yesterday morning’s flooding event.
He said the street flooded every wet season.
“We’ve been here a few years, and 12 months ago I got in contact with council,” he said.
“There’s a lot of water from the mountain behind us that comes down and feeds into an underwater pipe system behind all the houses.
“The council’s engineers told us that system is not sufficient to take all that water.
“What happens is it backs up and there’s branches and trees and logs.”
The council’s infrastructure services general manager, Bruce Gardiner, said the council was well aware of the issues with the drainage system at Hillview Crescent, and it was on the capital works program to be fixed.
“We just haven’t managed to get on to that particular project yet,” he said. “But we’ll get on to it as soon as we can.”
Mr Gardiner said there were several drainage problems identified across the city that needed to be remedied.
He said the council would be having ongoing discussions with Mr Searle about the Hillview Crescent issue.
“We’re in the Wet Tropics, and we do have a number of these issues,” he said. “We didn’t get to this one in time.”