Brisbane Mayor Adrian Schrinner told residents fearing the city was on the brink of major flooding that the situation this weekend was “different” from the devastation of 2011.
Key points:
- Conditions are ‘different’ to those that caused 2011 floods, says Brisbane Mayor Adrian Schrinner
- He said government authorities had ‘learned a lot from the past’ and were well prepared
- High tides tonight and tomorrow morning could cause further flooding in the city
Four people have died in floodwaters and hundreds of Gympie residents have been told to evacuate as an extreme weather system continues to dump torrential rains in southeast Queensland.
Speaking to announcer Cathie Schnitzerling on ABC Radio Brisbane this afternoon, Mr Schrinner said it was ‘understandable that people are reliving the 2011 Brisbane floods’.
However, he said the weather system hovering over southeast Queensland was not the same as the one that wreaked havoc 11 years ago.
“It wasn’t actually raining when the floodwaters came in,” Mr Schrinner said.
“We’ve had an extraordinary situation now where we’ve had almost six months of rain in the last 48 hours and a lot of that has been concentrated in Brisbane and south east Queensland. So that’s an amount extraordinary amount of rain and it still continues to rain.
“The waters, they come up quickly and they often go down quite quickly but then we have more rain, so it’s a different situation.
“I guess what we’re all waiting to see is what happens with the management of dams and the state authorities that run them.”
Mr Schrinner said just months ago that his council “believes we are going to get into a significant drought management situation”.
“Now most of the dams are full,” he said.
“People need to be reassured that all people in all governments have learned a lot from the past.
“Whether it’s local council, state authorities, councils, they’ve learned a lot and they work very well together.”
The waterways around Brisbane were expected to experience high tide at 6pm tonight and around 7am tomorrow morning.
Mr Schrinner said the combination of heavy rain and high tides meant more roads could be flooded this evening and Sunday morning.
Water released from dams, public transport services affected
The Wivenhoe Dam was at 112% capacity on Saturday. At the start of the week, the dam was at 56% capacity.
Seqwater said discharges were being made from the North Pine, Wivenhoe and Somerset dams.
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Mr Schrinner also warned Brisbane residents to stay at home and resist the urge to “sightsee” in their neighbourhood.
“People should stay off the roads as much as possible,” Schrinner said.
“Don’t walk through floodwater – you don’t know what’s down there, you don’t know how deep it is.”
CityCat services have been suspended along the Brisbane River due to the amount of debris in the waterway.
Bus lines 215, 220, 227, 590, 598 and 599 were also temporarily suspended due to flooding.
Brisbane City Council has distributed 20,000 sandbags since 3pm yesterday and more are available outside SES depots in Darra, Morningside, Newmarket and Zillmere.
For non-life-threatening emergencies, call SES on 132 500.
In an emergency, call triple-0.
