The Impact of the 2011 Summer Floods in Brisbane - Case Study Example

The Impact of the 2011 Summer Floods in Brisbane Introduction Brisbane is the capital city of Queensland, Australia. The Brisbane River is the longest river in the city. Brisbane River broke into its banks on 13th January, 2011 and the government was taken several steps to manage this flood and saved lives of general people as far as possible. In 2011, the unprecedented disaster has damaged almost 70% of the total state. It is significantly clear from the case that during the time of flood rain forecast was perfect but the problem was lying in other place. Rain forecasting was right but intensity of the peak rain time was not estimated properly. Answer 1 There were two major floods recorded in Brisbane, Queensland in 2011. One included a series of floods which occurred on 10th January in the Lockyer Valley and the city of Toowoomba. This was followed by a devastating flood occurred in the city of Brisbane on 13th January, 2011. The Brisbane flood of 2011 was the second biggest flood in the city in the 20th century. The Brisbane Flood was one of the series of floods that occurred in Queensland from 2010-2011. The Brisbane River Catchment area has been a sensitive area with respect to floods (Crompton, McAneney, Chen, Pielke and Haynes, 2010). In the 2011 Brisbane flood, major flooding was noted in most parts of the Brisbane River Catchment, especially in major tributaries of Brisbane River like Bremer River and Lockyer Creek. The flood led to the loss of one life in Brisbane and more than 23 lives in the valley of Lockyer. It was estimated that 18000 properties were submerged by the immensely high flood heights in metropolitan Brisbane and many parts of the Brisbane River Valley. All the houses in the floodplain area were highly damaged with some being completely washed away by the flood. The recorded height of the flood was 14.6 feet in the proper city areas which was estimated to be the 10th highest flood level in the history of floods in the Brisbane city. Major parts of the city were submerged under water and evacuation centres and rescue teams were launched by the government of Australia to manage the disastrous consequences of this flood. The flood not only led to the loss of lives and property but it also had profound impacts on the psychological and physical health of the residents in Brisbane (Alderman, Turner and Tonga, 2013). In total, more than 200,000 people were affected in varied ways by the Brisbane flood. A commercial loss of around USD 4 billion was recorded across different sectors like tourism, mining and agriculture. The flood caused the inundation of 3570 business and commercial premises and caused the damage of 1900 kilometres of roads in Brisbane city. It also caused the damage of three main sea ports of Brisbane and the Queensland rail network. More than 28000 houses had to be built after the flood. As per the records of the Insurance Council of Australia, 56200 insurance claims were raised after the flood which involved a total insured cost of over USD 2.55 billion (Van den Honert and McAneney, 2011). Answer 2 Wivenhoe Dam played an important role in this regard. It had done dual responsibility in this regard and these responsibilities were flood mitigation and water provision. The dam was established in the year 1985 to save every drop of water and to protect the region from drought. But after the mentioned disaster it was functioning like an activist of flood mitigation (Chanson and Brown, 2012). It also increased the water grid to improve regional water distribution system as well as the capacity to hold more quantity of water than the earlier days. Disaster management of this event was segmented to several phrases and these phrases are prevention, preparedness, recovery and response. Prevention or mitigation part included some important steps which were planning to control the disaster in a successful way, making budget to analyze the possible expenses, related legislature in this issue and implementing authorities. In the part of preparedness this could be analyzed that the planning was helpful in the real scenario or not. If plans were inadequate in case of emergency then those were reframed by the management of disaster. In the part of response state wise agencies were involved for the purpose of coordination to handle such kind of disaster. Local government played a crucial role in this regard. The emergency service units were preparedness and response. Legislative initiative, federal grants coordination coordinated state agency planning and programs were come under the recovery phase. All these phases were observed at the time of Brisbane flood, 2011. Brisbane City Council had done significant performance during that time to manage the disaster in an efficient way. From their previous experience they were aware about such kind of situation and for that reason they concentrated on the phase of planning with high importance. The impacts of the disaster were considered in their plans. Otherwise they could not be able to control the situation. These impacts also determined the effectiveness of response as one of the magnitude of this event (Bohensky and Leitch, 2013). The organization’s ability was come out when the disaster happened. The aim of this organization was to minimize the adverse effect of this disaster which were basically loss of lives, loss of business activities, property damage etc. The organization was involved in providing early warning sign so that people can take effective steps to save their property, business and most important thing which is their lives. Many people left that place before the flood stroke into the locality and this was possible for the activities of such organization. Their pre emergency safety planning was reduced four times amount of post disaster cost. Thus this can be said that this organization was helped to save money of the public as well as the government of that state. Response preparedness of this organization was able to minimize every dollar spent in this event. Response preparedness was also helpful in case of budget allocation and financing activities (Asai, Ishigaki, Baba and Toda, 2010). Brisbane City Council’s (BCC) disaster planning and response activities include several policies both in the state and federal level. The policies are as follows. This organization was provided guidance to the State Disaster Management Group. The Australian Emergency Manual Series was provided planning advice and guidance for this event. The Disaster Management Act was helped to establish appropriate disaster management arrangements and structures. BCC was getting success in controlling the disaster for several reasons. They were maintained and followed a structured hierarchy which was helped the organization to take strong steps in this issue. Again they were maintained situational awareness to control the disaster. Generally situational awareness refers to gathering intelligence and innovative ideas, forward planning to predict the future situation. These were very much helpful in this case as the organization could predict the situation and they provided awareness to the people for taking corrective steps to face such event. Strong and visible leadership was another reason for achieving success in this regard. Clear and time communication with public helped to handle this critical situation in an efficient way (Chanson, 2011). If public were not getting proper information at right time then controlling this event was impossible for them. Coordination and cooperation was playing important role to manage the disaster. Answer 3 In January 2011, two floods were occurred the first one was a massive and severe flash flood which gave very little opportunity to the authorities to make press the warning button. At 1pm in the afternoon, Bureau of Meteorology warned about a local flash flood which was a standard procedure but identifying the intensity of the disaster was not perfect. The disaster was more massive due to the nearest proximity of residential dwellings and Lockyer Creek, which gave very little time to the authority to evacuate the local people. According to the enquiry report of the Queensland Floods Commission, the Wivenhoe Dam was perfectly operated during the time of the disaster. During the flood, peak water level raised up to 9,000 m3/s and local slope was 1×10-4 which went wrong significantly and force of the flooded water was so high that it was impossible to stay out of the way of the surging water forces. The situation was so severe that the authorities of Wivenhove dam was forced to release the water through the damn in controlled manner. The river catchment has 13,570 km2 area and due to this large catchment area quantity of rain is a significant determinate for this river (Werner, Hunter and Bates, 2005). Effectiveness of the Wivenhove dam and flood fighting systems are significantly dependent on the whims and fancies of the rainfall and it went significantly wrong during the time of disaster. The damn has very little control on the Bremer River and it joins Brisbane River which makes the river very difficult to control. The city is situated in the flood plain which has made the disaster more severe and difficult to mitigate. Due to the extremely wet spring the catchment of the rivers were already saturated before the January 2011 so capacity of the river of holding water was less. Every disaster keeps something for future learning’s. According to study of Brisbane city council responses of the authorities were up to their tasks. The organization had a scalable and well structured disaster management hierarchy present during the time of the disaster. One day before the flood disaster management hierarchy was present in level 3. This was activated because of the heavy rain and advice from the flood information centre. On the day of the flood that means on 11th January the level was increased to 4 that mean the authority was right in terms increasing their level of alert with the increase level of waters. Authorities maintained their situational awareness (Orlikowski, 2002). They had provided map of the city, data related with the infrastructure of the city and contact lists of residence of the city. All these situational awareness shown by the authorities limited the disaster what could have been more catastrophic. Learning from the disaster Queensland flood commission recommended that every state government with the probability of floods must plan their disaster management according to the act of Queensland’s State-wide Natural Hazard Risk Assessment of 2003. The commission also recommended and gave emphasis on the matters like more real-time training for disaster management personnel. They also came up with the idea of involving local community into the picture. According to the case different community activities like food preparation, evacuation techniques, issuing warnings are the integral part of the community education programs (Yossef and Vriend, 2011). The flood had significant negative effect on the general and mental health of the local people. The case has significantly given emphasis on the public health during, before and after the time of flood. Mud army of Brisbane consisted of 23,000 volunteers saved lots of money for cleanup cost and they tirelessly worked for cleaning the city. Conclusion The number of life losses was comparatively low in this disaster but the Brisbane flood is recorded as one of the most disastrous floods in the history of Australia in terms of cost and damages incurred. The effects of the flood were highly derogatory for the local human beings, climate as well as other living organisms. The government of Australia had to launch several disaster management programs in Brisbane city in order to combat the after effects of the flood and offset the severe physical and mental damages caused by this natural disaster. It is significantly clear from the above that natural disaster is very difficult to control, in front of the environmental disaster very often different security systems fail to perform. After this natural disaster, authority of Brisbane city councils applied more stringent security measuring systems. The future learning’s are that if proper standardized security system is in place then destruction of natural disaster can be can be controlled to some extend and lots of lives can be saved. References Alderman, K. Turner, L.R. & Tonga, S. (2013). Assessment of the Health Impacts of the 2011 Summer Floods in Brisbane. Disaster Medicine and Public Heath Preparedness. Vol.7 (4). Asai, Y., Ishigaki, T., Baba, Y., and Toda, K. (2010). Safety Analysis of Evacuation Routes Considering Elderly Persons during Underground Flooding. J. of Hydroscience and Hydraulic Eng., JSCE, Vol. 28 (2). Bohensky, E. and Leitch, A. (2013). Framing the flood: a media analysis of themes of resilience in the 2011 Brisbane flood. London: Springer. Chanson, H. (2011). The 2010-2011 Floods in Queensland (Australia): Observations, First Comments and Personal Experience. J. La Houille Blanche, Vol. 1 (1). Chanson, H. and Brown, R. (2012). A Case Study of Interactions between Flood Flow and Buildings in an Urban Environment: Gardens Point during the 12-13 January 2011 Flood of the Brisbane River (Australia). In 4th IAHR International Symposium on Hydraulic Structures, 9-11 February 2012, Porto, Portugal. Crompton, R.P., McAneney, K.J., Chen, K., Pielke, R.A. & Haynes, K.A. (2010). Influence of location, population and climate on building damage and fatalities due to Australian bushfire: 1925–2009. Weather Climate & Society. Vol. 42 (1). Orlikowski, W.J. (2002), Knowing in Practice: Enacting a Collective Capability inDistributed Organizing, Organization Science, Vol. 13 (3). Van den Honert, R. C. & McAneney, K. J. (2011). The 2011 Brisbane Floods: Causes, Impacts and Implications. Water. Vol. 3 (4). Werner, M.G.F., Hunter, N.M., and Bates, P.D. (2005). Identifiability of Distributed Floodplain Roughness Values in Flood Extent Estimation. Journal. of Hydrology, Vol. 314 (4). Yossef, M.F.M., and Vriend, H.J. de (2011). Flow Details near River Groynes: Experimental Investigation. J. Hyd. Eng., ASCE, Vol. 137 (5). Read More