Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming

Ace Master · 12th January 2011, 09:19 PM

Hey,

check this link out was sent to me.

Australian flooding - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Thats alot of water.

Cheers

ACE

TrevMcRev · 12th January 2011, 10:02 PM

WOW

Eric Frei · 12th January 2011, 10:17 PM

Lucky?

Eric Frei · 13th January 2011, 04:43 PM

Some more around CBD

TrevMcRev · 13th January 2011, 04:48 PM

Geez, looks like Venice without all the gondolas....

How's the "dry dock"!

Eric Frei · 13th January 2011, 05:19 PM

Yeah, the water went over the top of the dry dock wall lifting the Diamantina ship, wasn't that long ago I shot a video of it.

YouTube - maritime museum brisbane

Thing is, that dry dock is no longer used as a dry dock, they actually bricked the wall up and it's a museum now, so lots of pumping and resetting to sit that ship down again.

Garry Brockley · 13th January 2011, 05:28 PM

Great Pictures Eric

just a quick note to BCC if you want your multi million dollar walkway you can collect it off Sandgate beach any time you wish.

Eric Frei · 16th January 2011, 01:08 PM

Here's some video including a drive through afterwards.

YouTube - Brisbane floods January 2011

LOL, listen carefully at 9.00min, I didn't know what she was saying until I edited it, damn!

Eric Frei · 16th January 2011, 02:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eric Frei

LOL, listen carefully at 9.00min, I didn't know what she was saying until I edited it, damn!

After closely reviewing the video I know who needed the assistance. Here's a clue.

Drouin Tree Service · 16th January 2011, 02:12 PM

Far out what a mess,whats the smell like Eric it can only be getting worse?

She needed a hand lol

Eric Frei · 16th January 2011, 02:41 PM

It stinks, bad!

There's garbage, petrol, diesel, sewerage etc in it, really pongs! They are worried about disease outbreak if not cleaned up quick.

Already some people have got a mystery illness. Did you see Kevin Rudd in my video? He was there on the phone right next to me at 1.30min.

There was lots of brass around the Kangaroo Point cliffs that morning.

Mystery infection linked to floods | Courier Mail

Quote:

January 16, 2011
FIVE patients are being treated in Queensland hospitals for a mystery infectious disease believed to be flood-related.

The news comes as concern mounts for thousands of people cleaning up after the floods and exposing themselves to bacteria and viruses.

Queensland Health has confirmed the patients have been tested for a range of diseases, including melioidosis and some flaviviruses such as kunjin virus and encephalitis.

One of the patients was transported to Brisbane after he became seriously ill.

Melioidosis is an infectious disease caused by a bacteria found in soil, mud and water and is brought out by intense rainfall. It can be fatal or cause loss of limbs.

People become infected through a break in the skin or inhaling the bacterium presenting initially with a fever, cough and chest pain that can develop into pneumonia.

Usually melioidosis occurs only in tropical climates but the last case in Brisbane was after the 1974 floods.

Drug treatments for melioidosis have been given to some of the five patients, of whom four are in Rockhampton and one is being treated in Brisbane after visiting Rockhampton.

"We have five cases of people who were involved in the floods in the Rockhampton, Theodore, Moura area who have developed infections of some sort," Queensland's Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said yesterday.

"We don't know what it is, we are still waiting on results from those tests."

Dr Young said doctors were "doing a whole herd of tests" to diagnose the disease.

She said she was extremely concerned about infection after seeing many people walking in flood waters and mud without proper protection.

"I am worried about people getting staphylococcal infections," she said. "Staph is in the water. If people can avoid going into it, they should.

"People will get cuts from debris and they will have staph and strep infections because of the bacteria in the water."

The warning came as Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd was treated in hospital for a foot infection yesterday. A spokesman said Mr Rudd suffered a minor abrasion while helping out in the floods, which later became infected.

Federal Opposition spokesman on regional health services, Andrew Laming, yesterday criticised Queensland Health for its "slow response" and "misinformation" regarding the flood emergency.

Dr Laming said Queensland Health had been providing conflicting advice to people since December 29.

"The public health message at this point has been inadequate. If it turns out we have significant bacterial infections then this needs to be managed better," he said.

Meanwhile, a warning has been issued to GPs by their peak body that up to 70 per cent of people associated with Queensland floods are expected to become ill either physically or mentally.

Drouin Tree Service · 16th January 2011, 04:08 PM

Very dangerous situation,Kevin Rudd is in hospital he caught something thru a cut.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...d-efforts.html

Eric Frei · 17th January 2011, 08:41 PM

Newspaper Article location:- http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nati...-1225989066171

What I wrote which may or may not get published there.

Quote:

According to their website Wivenhoe on Friday 7 January 2011 at 6.00am was 106.3% then on Monday 10 January at 9.00am it was 148.4%. There's no figures I could find between those dates, maybe no-one works on the weekends. It was that weekend when no water was entering the Brisbane river system from the Bremer river that huge releases could have occurred without breaking the banks of the Brisbane river. Why that water level was not quickly reduced to 100% again is the question to be asked.

The dam overflows at the other spillway around 225% capacity, so there's capacity to hold back 1,450,000megalitres. An inflow of 1,000,000megalitres over a 24 hour rain event could have been held back, especially knowing Bremer River had a wall of water coming and rain had eased up almost gone on Wednesday.

The objective is to release water and keep the dam close to 100% capacity leaving room for flood mitigation, releases tailored to prevent Brisbane river bursting it's banks.

On Tuesday 11 January at 1.30pm I shot video at Moggill ferry, listen around 2.29min http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhZDd7tsl40 it was already flooding, too late, opportunity lost over the weekend. The writing was on BOM

Newspaper article content:-

Quote:

Water releases before deluge too low: engineer
January 17, 2011
MORE serious questions about Wivenhoe Dam were raised yesterday by a senior engineer who claims the Brisbane River flooding was avoidable.

The engineer, Michael O'Brien, said the official data on water flows shows last week's Brisbane River flooding would have been largely avoided if the dam operators had raised their releases of water on the weekend before last Monday's deluge.

Mr O'Brien, and others not directly involved with the dam's operation, told The Australian that the river flood and the devastation of thousands of homes was inevitable after a decision to release relatively low volumes of water on Friday, January 7, and over the ensuing weekend.

The data shows that the dam went from a little over 100 per cent of its capacity on Friday, January 7, meaning it still had capacity for more than one million megalitres in its flood compartment, to about 150 per cent by the morning of Monday, January 10 - before the deluge hit.

Over that weekend and prior to the extreme rainfall event that would flood Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley on Monday, the dam's operators released a total of about 200,000 megalitres.

Scrutiny of official water-release and dam volume data shows the flood would have been moderate at worst in Brisbane had there been larger releases in the days before the deluge. But it became extreme due to the sudden surge from the release of about 645,000 megalitres from Wivenhoe last Tuesday, which was about 30 per cent of the total capacity of a dam built to protect the city and surrounding suburbs.

This sudden release came because the in-flow of water from the dam's catchment meant its reservoir had risen to alarming levels of about 190 per cent and were closing in on the level that triggers an uncontrolled discharge.

Mr O'Brien, whose written review is based on publicly available data released by the Queensland government-owned dam's operators, SEQWater, said full disclosure was vital to reassure people that the dam was operated responsibly. But a more conservative approach over that crucial weekend would not have made any difference to the flooding that occurred in the Lockyer Valley and the city of Ipswich, both of which are in separate areas of the Brisbane River catchment.

SEQWater Grid chief executive Barry Dennien insisted last night that although the January 8-9 releases were relatively low compared with what occurred in the days afterwards, this was in accordance with the operating manual to mitigate flooding. He said that nobody had foreseen the extreme rainfall that ensued.

"We are very comfortable with the way the manual has been adopted and I would not be sitting here with this level of confidence if I did not think that everything happened the right way," Mr Dennien said.

"This is all about probability and what our people do is guided by a set of rules that they follow in the flood centre, and it is easy in hindsight to say they should have done things differently. We are proud of the way the dam and our people performed."

Mr Dennien said that if the dam's operators had pre-emptively released larger volumes from the flood compartment of the dam, which would have given the dam a much larger buffer for the rainfall that came, there would have been flooding in other parts of the catchment.

A senior hydrologist, Greg Roads, who helped design a recent upgrade at the dam, and a Queensland disaster risk scientist, Ken Granger, said the experts operating Wivenhoe Dam were among the best in Australia and would have done everything by the book.

Mr Roads agreed that if the dam's operators had released more water on the weekend before the deluge there would have been significantly more capacity for flood storage in Wivenhoe and a lower river peak in Brisbane, but he said they had no way of knowing the severity of the weather that was coming.

"These questions about the dam's performance should be raised and answered and I support an inquiry," Mr Roads said.

He said he believed there would have been moderate inundation of some properties if the releases on the weekend had been directed at emptying the flood compartment as quickly as possible to increase its ability to store rainfall from an extreme event.

Dr Granger said that if the dam had been mismanaged "then that will come out in due course and procedures will be corrected, but these are very complex issues and the people making the decisions have all the information they need at that time as well as strict procedures".

Premier Anna Bligh, who has previously spoken about how "very, very close" the dam came to an uncontrolled discharge, said yesterday: "There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that without the Wivenhoe Dam this disaster would have been on a far larger and catastrophic level. But we will be looking into the full operation of the dam with a comprehensive and very public and transparent review. And we'll all get to understand a lot more about how the dam operated during the past week and what that meant for the way that this event was managed."

The Premier said on Saturday that current releases from the dam were being carefully calculated so that the maximum height of the water would stay within the river system.

Mr O'Brien, who spent his weekend completing a review that he has sent to one of the SEQWater board's members, said it appeared that the dam's operators were very slow to respond to the initial increase in levels at Wivenhoe and it took several days before there was any real increase in the rate of release from Wivenhoe to return the dam to proper flood management levels.

Mr O'Brien said another concern was that the policy for storing water for urban supply in the Wivenhoe Dam did not change to become more conservative despite the weather bureau warning from last year that the weather phases had changed from the drought-forming El Nino events to the wet La Nina.

Eric Frei · 23rd January 2011, 07:44 AM

With more speculation about the releases of water from Wivenhoe dam and the impact it had upon flood levels a class action against the dam operators and govt cant be ruled out.

Wivenhoe Dam operators face threat of lawsuits | Courier Mail

Yesterday I drove over the dam wall (you cannot stop on the wall) and snapped some shots. The viewing platforms etc is closed but certainly looks different, one of the viewing areas was almost washed away and the bottom of the gorge had be scoured out and looked like a totally new bedrock.

The valley downstream shows massive erosion and just how high the water was, it's been remodelled from a massive release of water.

Now between the dam and Fernvale there's a bridge over the Brisbane River, I suppose it's only 3kms away. These next picture show how high the water was, in fact it was way higher than the bridge itself, perhaps 4m higher judging by the trees and debris.

Considering all those above pictures I also agree with the following:-

Source: Dam's releases blamed for inundation | The Australian

Quote:

MORE than 80 per cent of the flood in the Brisbane River at its peak last Thursday was the direct result of a critically urgent release from the Wivenhoe Dam of up to a third of its entire capacity.

Data obtained by The Australian shows that, without that release, which peaked at an unprecedented rate of 645,000 megalitres a day, flooding in Brisbane would have been minimal.

Data from Wivenhoe Dam's owner and operator, the Queensland government-owned SEQWater, shows the peak flow in the Brisbane River when the river hit a height of 4.46m in the early hours of last Thursday was about 9000 cubic metres per second. Hydrologists and engineers said a release at a peak rate of 645,000ML a day would produce an estimated peak flow of almost 7500 cubic metres per second, leading to the conclusion that the flooding occurred because of the massive release from the dam.

It usually takes 36 hours for a release of water from Wivenhoe Dam to reach the city gauge in the capital. The peak release of water from the dam occurred late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday. The Brisbane River peaked in the state capital about 4am on Thursday, coinciding with a king tide.

One of the critical tasks for the commission of inquiry into the floods, announced yesterday, will be to decide if Wivenhoe's operators held on to water in the flood compartment for too long and released relatively small amounts on the weekend of January 8-9, and were forced on January 11 to start a drastic release strategy to avoid the possibility of collapse.

Engineers and hydrologists have said they could not understand why it was necessary to hold so much water since the recent establishment of southeast Queensland's water grid, with desalination plants and pipelines to ensure the region would not run out of water.

Senior Brisbane engineer Michael O'Brien, who analysed the dam's outflow for The Australian, said: "We have a dam that should have worked but we did not use it properly. It didn't work and we flooded Brisbane. That flooding did not need to occur."

Another engineer who has been examining the published data said he believed the dam had been poorly managed and that "unfortunately it has been turned into a man-made disaster".

"With saturated catchments during a strong La Nina cycle in the middle of the wet season, and with a weather bureau forecast for a significant 200-300mm rain event transpiring, the discharges from the dam over the weekend of January 8 and 9 were paltry and extremely deficient," the engineer said.

Other experts have commended the work of the dam's operators. SEQWaterGrid chief executive Barry Dennien said the dam had been run according to its operating manual and he was unable to answer further written questions because of the inquiry.

"The inquiry announcement was for me quite a surprise. I am still confident in the operation of the dam," he said.

SEQWater had contacted Mr O'Brien earlier yesterday and begun examining his written review of the dam's operations.

Jeff Darby · 23rd January 2011, 08:43 AM

The scars of a tragedy are evident on the landscape in these pictures and the people of Queensland have certainly been through hell.

In the aftermath of the heartbreak and loss the people are looking for some one to blame, a sound reason of why did this happen it's a fair enough question, could it have been avoided ? could we have prevented this tragedy from happening ? the thoughts of why and if go on and on.

Given the recent drought QLD has also experienced I could see it being a hard call to release water in a preventative measure and risk no water for the immediate future, or take a chance and let it go and rely on the annual rains which has not been to annual lately. This decision alone for the person with the final say would have been huge....sorta damned if you do and damned if you dont...in hindsight which is allways 20/20 they should have acted or the very least been calculating the right amount of water to dump in case the worst happens.

They say the dam was operated according to the operating manuel but really has the book on flooding to this magnitude been written ? or is it about to ? If contingency plans for this level of flooding has been worked out by people who know what they are doing and not followed well in my opinion I think they might have to face the music ! please remember folks this is not my line of expertise and I am definitely looking from the outside.

So do we concentrate on blaming someone or do we study what has just unfolded and put into place a system of warning devices or strategies to mitigate the carnage flooding on this level causes to the people living in this flood path, I watched a documentary on how the Japanese control heavy flooding in their country I must say it was impressive and efective to say the least maybe we should copy their example....or maybe we shouldn't cause it may not happen again ? I think we should take the opportunity this disaster has provided and during the rebuilding process incorporate preventative
measures.

jmcg.insight.gardens · 23rd January 2011, 08:55 PM

should be interesting how it all pans out.

The force of water is a mighty thing. So many people affected, lost everything.

Some good photos there Eric, like the shot of the watertank. Fierce amount of water.

Seen big trees up in the trees up in Upper Five Day Creek, old Frank Supple said it was from a flood about fifty years ago, said that cows were washed down to Kempsey. Was hard to imagine at the time, now I've seen images of the recent flooding in Toowoomba I can visualise Five Day Creek at the time, the Kempsey river must have been wild.

Kinda agree with JayD, would be hard to let out too much water as we have had such dire drought, but I wonder why to meteorologists didn't pick up on this rain event, perhaps with adequate warning the dam might have been let out sooner.

Eric Frei · 23rd January 2011, 10:28 PM

They were warned, they knew, they could not have had a better and more accurate weather forecast.

You know what 1m3 is right?

You know many chipper trucks are like 10m3 right?

You know a shipping container is 30m3 right?

Now imagine 7,500m3 of water released per second and that going on for a whole day. Hard for our brain to get around a number like that but it's 645,000megalitres.

Sydney harbour's capacity is estimated at around 500,000megalitres so more than the entire Sydney harbour was let out in 24 hours.

It was let out at the worst time.

You can see on their site if you move the sliders around how they do not stock pile water, they keep the dam at 100%.

Wivenhoe Dam | Seqwater

They have it in their rule book to let it out within 7days.

The problem is that the releases over the weekend were very low, and downstream had no increases in river levels, so they should have dumped then especially knowing that a severe rain event was looming.

There's 4 basic rules, I bolded them below

Dam manual released as Wivenhoe operators come under growing scrutiny | The Australian

Quote:

January 21, 2011
Queensland Natural Resources Minister Stephen Robertson last night ordered the release of the manual, saying it was part of the government's “commitment to full transparency”.

Premier Anna Bligh has launched a commission of inquiry into the preparation and response to the floods across Queensland, to be headed by senior judge Cate Holmes.

The manual states the top priority for dam operators is to ensure the structural safety of the dam, then to provide “optimum protection of urbanised areas” for communities from inundation, minimise disruption to life in the Brisbane and Stanley Valleys, then provide water supply after floods.

“Structural failure of Wivenhoe dam could have catastrophic consequences,” the manual reports.

“Wivenhoe dam is predominantly a central core rockfill dam. Such dams are not resistant to overtopping and are susceptible to breaching should such an event occur.

“Overtopping is considered a major threat to the security of Wivenhoe dam.”

It says water must then be released within seven days of the flood peak, given Brisbane's historical tendency to receive major rain events in quick succession.

Speaking on ABC radio this morning, Treasurer Andrew Fraser said dam operators were bound to operate in accordance with the manual and its guidelines would be examined in the commission of inquiry.

Ms Bligh said the inquiry would examine whether dam authorities had stuck to the rules.

Chief executive Barry Dennien has said the dam was run according to the book and has declined to answer questions ahead of the commission of inquiry.

Ms Bligh said the inquiry has been tasked with two critical questions that could be pivotal for the dam's future operation.

“Was the dam operated in compliance with the operating manual and ... is the operation manual appropriate for the circumstances?” Ms Bligh told ABC Radio.

“That is, did everybody operating it do what they were supposed to do and is the manual that operated the dam the appropriate one, given the circumstance that we face?”

“I want to make sure we are getting all the best possible advice and we are operating the dam in the best possible way.”

Now matters get more interesting, we hear this 1 in 100 year flood BS when we know now that there's been many floods almost as large as the 1974 one and they appear to happen about every 30 years.

Alarming report on Brisbane River risks covered up | The Australian

Quote:

# Hedley Thomas
# From: The Australian
# January 13, 2011

A SECRET report by scientific and engineering experts warned of significantly greater risks of vast destruction from Brisbane River flooding - and raised grave concerns with the Queensland government and the city's council a decade ago.

But the recommendations in the report for radical changes in planning strategy, emergency plans and transparency about the true flood levels for Brisbane were rejected and the report was covered up.

The comprehensive 1999 Brisbane River Flood Study made alarming findings about predicted devastation to tens of thousands of flood-prone properties, which were given the green light for residential development since the 1974 flood. The engineers and hydrologists involved in the study warned that the next major flood in Brisbane would be between 1m and 2m higher than anticipated by the Brisbane town plan.

The study highlighted how the council had permitted the development of thousands of properties whose owners were led to believe they would be out of harm's way in a flood on the scale of 1974.

The study was leaked to this reporter in June 2003 by a high-level public servant, who revealed that the local and state government at the time were less concerned with flood risks and more interested in seeing property development in low-lying areas.

"The flood immunity of properties is less than previously assessed. The average flood damages associated with flooding will be significantly higher. There are potential legal implications for council by allowing development to occur in higher-risk areas. As a minimum, developers and residents may need to be advised of the actual flood risk on their property," the study says. "All elements of the study have been subjected to independent peer review because the key findings have significant implications for council.

"The major finding of this study is that the calculated one-in-100-year design flood flow . . . is about 1m to 2m higher than the current development control in the Brisbane River corridor. The simple option of saying that the current development control level represents the one-in-100-year flood level is not valid."

But after receiving the study in 1999 the council adopted a "no change, maintain status quo" strategy -- despite its expert review advising that such a strategy was "poor" because it would reduce flood immunity, increase council's liability and cause the loss of Natural Disaster Relief funds. In the debate that followed its leaking it emerged that misplaced faith by governments and residents in the flood mitigation potential of Wivenhoe Dam played into the hands of property developers, who were profitably turning low-lying swaths of Brisbane into expensive housing.

The Crime and Misconduct Commission investigated the cover-up of the study and recommended better transparency for ratepayers.

The then Labor lord mayor, Tim Quinn, and others in the civic cabinet at the time had known about the study for four years but withheld its existence from ratepayers -- until its leaking forced it into the open. Mr Quinn said then that the study was a "draft" and incomplete and that was why neither he nor his predecessor Jim Soorley had acted on its findings.

Mr Quinn was ousted as lord mayor months after the furore by Campbell Newman who campaigned against secrecy over the flood study and radically overhauled policies to warn the public of the severe risk of another major Brisbane River flood.

Mr Newman, an engineer, said at the time: "A vital study of immense public importance has been kept secret from the community for four years. The council has had this knowledge since 1999 and yet there has been no change in development or building rules reflecting the recommendations in the study. The effect of this is to leave a lot of innocent purchasers of riverfront property exposed who need not have been exposed.

"How can it be 'buyer beware' when the council is not providing the necessary information to purchasers.

"This is totally unacceptable given that people rely on their council for information to assist them when it comes to property matters and particularly safety.

"It's a case which could have a huge impact on people's lives."

This link has data on our river levels for floods.

Known Floods in the Brisbane & Bremer River Basin, including the Cities of Brisbane and Ipswich

It appears that much faith was placed in Wivenhoe to prevent a flood, and areas susceptible to flooding are being built today, jeez the brand new tennis centre flooded, Suncorp stadium flooded, brand new high rises at Southbank flooded .... and who allows this? Based on the information I see I can only wonder, and the management of Wivenhoe is under scrutiny because it was the Holy Grail for many that it would never happen again, all sorts of people banked on it.

Apocalypsse · 23rd January 2011, 11:04 PM

How are the flooded suburbs/city now looking? The news has a horrible way of not following up much on anything.

Eric Frei · 23rd January 2011, 11:15 PM

Well, the mud clean up is over but things are still not the same.

Ferry services for instance.

Southbank still closed.

Tennis centre closed.

The rebuilding is to commence.

Watch ACA tomorrow night, I think it's about insurance companies not paying.

jmcg.insight.gardens · 24th January 2011, 10:14 AM

Quote:

The comprehensive 1999 Brisbane River Flood Study made alarming findings about predicted devastation to tens of thousands of flood-prone properties, which were given the green light for residential development since the 1974 flood. The engineers and hydrologists involved in the study warned that the next major flood in Brisbane would be between 1m and 2m higher than anticipated by the Brisbane town plan.

well that backs up what I was saying to my daughter, that the problem was allowing people to build in areas that were low lying in a flood plain.

Quote:

The study highlighted how the council had permitted the development of thousands of properties whose owners were led to believe they would be out of harm's way in a flood on the scale of 1974.

The study was leaked to this reporter in June 2003 by a high-level public servant, who revealed that the local and state government at the time were less concerned with flood risks and more interested in seeing property development in low-lying areas.

That makes me angry it does.

Quote:

But after receiving the study in 1999 the council adopted a "no change, maintain status quo" strategy -- despite its expert review advising that such a strategy was "poor" because it would reduce flood immunity, increase council's liability and cause the loss of Natural Disaster Relief funds. In the debate that followed its leaking it emerged that misplaced faith by governments and residents in the flood mitigation potential of Wivenhoe Dam played into the hands of property developers, who were profitably turning low-lying swaths of Brisbane into expensive housing.

well I think that is so typical, they should have the pants sued off them.

Seems my initial assumption was correct. More secret cover ups for the almighty dollar.

Apocalypsse · 24th January 2011, 04:51 PM

This is gonna get interesting with the inquest into the Wivanhoe dam and now this stuff about the 1999 flood study.

Eric Frei · 24th January 2011, 05:01 PM

Fresh out

Wivenhoe dam outflows may have breached guide | The Australian

Quote:

Wivenhoe dam outflows may have breached guide
January 24, 2011

Wivenhoe Dam operators came close to breaching their own operating manual when they released an unprecedented volume of water in the days ahead of the Brisbane flood.

The operating manual -- which gives indemnity over civil action to the operator and owner, SEQWater, if its set procedures are followed -- states that "peak outflows generally should not exceed peak inflows".

But leaked emails show that on the evening of Tuesday, January 11 -- less than two days before Brisbane was flooded -- Wivenhoe's operators had ratcheted up the release of waters to at least match the volume spilling into the dam.

Critics of SEQWater have alleged that the dam operator should have been releasing water out of Wivenhoe's flood compartment the weekend before Brisbane's flood, before a deluge of rain forced the drastic release of 645,000ml on the Tuesday.

The issue will be one of the critical tasks for the Commission of Inquiry into the floods.

In email communications with Wivenhoe's engineering officer, Graham Keegan, of SEQWater, which operates the Queensland government-owned dam, the management of the dam had moved into a "critical phase" by Tuesday with the inflow and deluge of rain.

On Tuesday evening, the email alert advises that the dam operators had dramatically increased the release of waters to 6700 cubic metres per second (cumecs) at 5.30pm, and would increase to 8000 cumecs at 8.30pm.

"This will match release rate with estimated inflow rate," the email said.

The release rate, and whether it exceeded the volume of inflow, will prove critical to a possible class action being threatened by Brisbane lawyers over whether Wivenhoe's operator held on to water too long before January 11's massive release into the river system.

Under the act, the owner of a dam "does not incur civil liability" if the flood mitigation manual is followed.

Since the flood, SEQWater has repeatedly stated that it followed Wivenhoe's operating manual.

Minister for Natural Resources Stephen Robertson said yesterday the desalination plant at Tugun -- built in response to crippling drought -- had been cranked up to 66 per cent of capacity to ensure quality water supplies for residents in Brisbane, Ipswich, the Gold Coast and Logan.

Besides working outdoors and being weather aware I'm a curious type of guy. I'm all over that dam, that's why I drove out there, took footage and the river was already flooding on the Tuesday.

wivenhoe website states the dam's catchment is 7,020km2.

So if 1mm of rain fell into a saturated catchment then you'd get 7,020megalitres of water

If 100mm of rain fell you'd get 702,000megalitres of water.

They have rain gauges out there too and this is not a guess job for a tree nerd but a professional field to make these calculations (hydrologist). They would know from years of experience what volume of rain in the catchment raises the level how much (in height and megalitres).

If the forecast is for 100mm to 200mm of rain in the next few days you bet they should know what that means to them. You'd look at the current levels incoming, current holdings and expected incomings then release sufficient with spare before the heavier rain hit. Jeez, and I'm just a tree bloke.

It would be a screaming shame and disgrace to turn a blind eye to all of this, these people are highly qualified and paid to get it right and have had 26 years of data to work from with state of the art gear.

Statements like this are vague, what is peak? What about when there is no rain and they are just letting out to go back to 100%?

Quote:

peak outflows generally should not exceed peak inflows

Makes you wonder eh.

Eric Frei · 26th January 2011, 07:32 AM

Flooding leaves house-sized rubble in Wivenhoe dam spillway - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Quote:

Tue Jan 25, 2011
Water being released from Wivenhoe Dam, west of Brisbane, during this month's heavy rain and flooding has left huge concrete and rock boulders below the spillway.

At the height of heavy rain and storms, Wivenhoe Dam reached more than 190 per cent as it held back the flooded Brisbane River.

A peak of 645,000 megalitres a day was being released through all five floodgates.

The large volume of water has gouged concrete and rock boulders from the bottom of the spillway.

Some are as big as cars, others the size of a house - all dumped in a pile by the raging water.

Dam operator SEQWater says it has already investigated the rock deposits as part of a routine post-release review and found there has been no impact on Wivenhoe's wall.

They say the rubble has been scraped from the bottom of the spillway by the large releases of water during the flood.

The dam level is currently around 100 per cent.

Darrell Mcleod · 26th January 2011, 09:27 AM

Would make you wonder if the base of the spillway is constructed adequately; perhaps the volume of water released had not been considered – who knows?

Difficulty is what is needed for drinking and what is needed for flood mitigation given previous drought etc – me thinks the two have not blended together so will be interesting to see what happens with this and what the politicians do in the future

Brisbane and other areas obviously NOW require better protection against flooding where regardless of what volume of water is required for drinking it can gained and protected

Hate to say it but another dam / dams maybe?

Shame about all of this water throughout so much of eastern Australia, next year or later we may be in drought again

Somehow we MUST store and as a country maybe share our water and protect ourselves better from the possibility of drought

We need leaders right now with great vision and determination to accept the challenges

Few want more dams but what is / are the alternatives – better systems of urban water harvesting, tanks, stormwater reuse, storage etc – in my view the surface of all of this has only just been scratched

Jeff Darby · 26th January 2011, 09:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cruisin_long

Would make you wonder if the base of the spillway is constructed adequately; perhaps the volume of water released had not been considered – who knows?

Difficulty is what is needed for drinking and what is needed for flood mitigation given previous drought etc – me thinks the two have not blended together so will be interesting to see what happens with this and what the politicians do in the future

Brisbane and other areas obviously NOW require better protection against flooding where regardless of what volume of water is required for drinking it can gained and protected

Hate to say it but another dam / dams maybe?

Shame about all of this water throughout so much of eastern Australia, next year or later we may be in drought again

Somehow we MUST store and as a country maybe share our water and protect ourselves better from the possibility of drought

We need leaders right now with great vision and determination to accept the challenges

Few want more dams but what is / are the alternatives – better systems of urban water harvesting, tanks, stormwater reuse, storage etc – in my view the surface of all of this has only just been scratched

I feel we need to look at the Japanese model they really have taken the
" The Bull by the Horns" they have installed massive underground storage facilities with interconnecting reservoirs with water pumps powered by jet engines for fast and efficient transfer of large amounts of water extremely fast.

This is interesting.. http://bit.ly/hifvTJ

Eric Frei · 26th January 2011, 10:09 AM

I was talking to an engineer the other day and he says Wivenhoe shouldn't dump it's excess into the Brisbane river, it needs to go straight out to sea or elsewhere but not into the river system.

Traditionally most dams are in rivers and usually at a point where there's a gorge so they have a narrow point to build a dam wall. The river system below the dam suffers and when the dam lets water out it floods downstream, nothing new in that typical technology.

But the overflow (other than small regular releases for environmental purposes) needs to go elsewhere.

Estimates are now that flood damage Australia wide is $20billion and the govt is thinking of a levy (tax), I doubt there's much interest or money in prevention and money will go into rebuilding things much the same for the next event.

The Q100 regulation is 3.7m high, the river peaked at 4.46m high and the 1974 flood was 5.45m. How they get this 3.7m number and then label it the Q100 (1 in 100 year flood) is rather worrying eh.

Residents home in on height regulation | Courier Mail

Eric Frei · 26th January 2011, 10:26 AM

I wondered where the Carpentaria was. It looks like this and it was there when I visited and it cant get out either.

But all I could see was this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eric Frei

However I found it, apparently it had a leak, got an air bubble and rolled over.

Eric Frei · 30th January 2011, 06:21 PM

Tonight Tropical Cyclone (TC) Anthony will hit the coast around Bowen.

Another huge low pressure system near Vanuatu has just progressed to cyclone status named TC Yasi, it makes TC Anthony look like a cloud. It is coming, travelling west and intensifying, they estimate it will make our coast around Thursday this week.

Jeff Darby · 30th January 2011, 06:35 PM

fingers crossed it dissipates between there and here...

Eric Frei · 30th January 2011, 06:44 PM

It's a monster that thing, have a look at TC Anthony, that is cat 2, this TC Yasi is still building and most of the time they are there most powerful when they cross land.

All prediction models have come to the same conclusion.

Yes, I hope it fizzes out. TC Anthony is expected to dump 400mm of rain when it lands, imagine what TC Yasi would do?

As a matter of interest Yasi is a tree.

12th January 2011, 09:19 PM	#61
Ace Master Mature tree Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Australia, Vic, Melbourne Posts: 385	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming Hey, check this link out was sent to me. Australian flooding - The Big Picture - Boston.com Thats alot of water. Cheers ACE __________________ Website: The Mt Dandenong Ranges Tree Specialists YouTube: Ace Tree Master

12th January 2011, 10:02 PM	#62
TrevMcRev Mature Tree Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Posts: 1,594	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming WOW

12th January 2011, 10:17 PM	#63
Eric Frei Admin - Owner Palm & Tree Services in Brisbane Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 12,994	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming Lucky? Attached Thumbnails __________________ Protect your rights to work - Join Australian Tree Association My businesses:- Qualified Brisbane Palm and Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding Brisbane \| Brisbane - Gold Coast Consulting Arborist

13th January 2011, 04:43 PM	#64
Eric Frei Admin - Owner Palm & Tree Services in Brisbane Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 12,994	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming Some more around CBD Attached Thumbnails __________________ Protect your rights to work - Join Australian Tree Association My businesses:- Qualified Brisbane Palm and Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding Brisbane \| Brisbane - Gold Coast Consulting Arborist

13th January 2011, 04:48 PM	#65
TrevMcRev Mature Tree Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Posts: 1,594	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming Geez, looks like Venice without all the gondolas.... How's the "dry dock"!

13th January 2011, 05:28 PM	#67
Garry Brockley Bayside Tree Care Brisbane Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Brisbane Aus Posts: 1,641	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming Great Pictures Eric just a quick note to BCC if you want your multi million dollar walkway you can collect it off Sandgate beach any time you wish. __________________ My business:- Brisbane Bayside Tree Care Last edited by Garry Brockley; 13th January 2011 at 07:32 PM.

16th January 2011, 02:12 PM	#70
Drouin Tree Service Veteran Heritage Status Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 1,727	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming Far out what a mess,whats the smell like Eric it can only be getting worse? She needed a hand lol __________________ Drouin Tree Services \| Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland \| Landclearing Melbourne

16th January 2011, 04:08 PM	#72
Drouin Tree Service Veteran Heritage Status Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 1,727	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming Very dangerous situation,Kevin Rudd is in hospital he caught something thru a cut. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...d-efforts.html __________________ Drouin Tree Services \| Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland \| Landclearing Melbourne

23rd January 2011, 08:43 AM	#75
Jeff Darby Moderator - Previously known as JayD Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: TreeWorld, Sydney Australia Posts: 2,059	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming The scars of a tragedy are evident on the landscape in these pictures and the people of Queensland have certainly been through hell. In the aftermath of the heartbreak and loss the people are looking for some one to blame, a sound reason of why did this happen it's a fair enough question, could it have been avoided ? could we have prevented this tragedy from happening ? the thoughts of why and if go on and on. Given the recent drought QLD has also experienced I could see it being a hard call to release water in a preventative measure and risk no water for the immediate future, or take a chance and let it go and rely on the annual rains which has not been to annual lately. This decision alone for the person with the final say would have been huge....sorta damned if you do and damned if you dont...in hindsight which is allways 20/20 they should have acted or the very least been calculating the right amount of water to dump in case the worst happens. They say the dam was operated according to the operating manuel but really has the book on flooding to this magnitude been written ? or is it about to ? If contingency plans for this level of flooding has been worked out by people who know what they are doing and not followed well in my opinion I think they might have to face the music ! please remember folks this is not my line of expertise and I am definitely looking from the outside. So do we concentrate on blaming someone or do we study what has just unfolded and put into place a system of warning devices or strategies to mitigate the carnage flooding on this level causes to the people living in this flood path, I watched a documentary on how the Japanese control heavy flooding in their country I must say it was impressive and efective to say the least maybe we should copy their example....or maybe we shouldn't cause it may not happen again ? I think we should take the opportunity this disaster has provided and during the rebuilding process incorporate preventative measures. __________________ Member: Australian Tree Association Join the Australian Tree Association...Have your voice heard ! Arboriculture, A life long study for some, a passing phase for others © Jeffrey J Darby 2011

23rd January 2011, 08:55 PM	#76
jmcg.insight.gardens Over mature heritage tree Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Mannering Park, Australia Posts: 623	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming should be interesting how it all pans out. The force of water is a mighty thing. So many people affected, lost everything. Some good photos there Eric, like the shot of the watertank. Fierce amount of water. Seen big trees up in the trees up in Upper Five Day Creek, old Frank Supple said it was from a flood about fifty years ago, said that cows were washed down to Kempsey. Was hard to imagine at the time, now I've seen images of the recent flooding in Toowoomba I can visualise Five Day Creek at the time, the Kempsey river must have been wild. Kinda agree with JayD, would be hard to let out too much water as we have had such dire drought, but I wonder why to meteorologists didn't pick up on this rain event, perhaps with adequate warning the dam might have been let out sooner.

23rd January 2011, 11:04 PM	#78
Apocalypsse Veteran Heritage Status Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Victoria, Australia Posts: 1,152	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming How are the flooded suburbs/city now looking? The news has a horrible way of not following up much on anything.

23rd January 2011, 11:15 PM	#79
Eric Frei Admin - Owner Palm & Tree Services in Brisbane Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 12,994	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming Well, the mud clean up is over but things are still not the same. Ferry services for instance. Southbank still closed. Tennis centre closed. The rebuilding is to commence. Watch ACA tomorrow night, I think it's about insurance companies not paying. __________________ Protect your rights to work - Join Australian Tree Association My businesses:- Qualified Brisbane Palm and Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding Brisbane \| Brisbane - Gold Coast Consulting Arborist

24th January 2011, 04:51 PM	#81
Apocalypsse Veteran Heritage Status Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Victoria, Australia Posts: 1,152	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming This is gonna get interesting with the inquest into the Wivanhoe dam and now this stuff about the 1999 flood study.

26th January 2011, 09:27 AM	#84
Darrell Mcleod Mature tree Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Victoria Australia Posts: 242	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming Would make you wonder if the base of the spillway is constructed adequately; perhaps the volume of water released had not been considered – who knows? Difficulty is what is needed for drinking and what is needed for flood mitigation given previous drought etc – me thinks the two have not blended together so will be interesting to see what happens with this and what the politicians do in the future Brisbane and other areas obviously NOW require better protection against flooding where regardless of what volume of water is required for drinking it can gained and protected Hate to say it but another dam / dams maybe? Shame about all of this water throughout so much of eastern Australia, next year or later we may be in drought again Somehow we MUST store and as a country maybe share our water and protect ourselves better from the possibility of drought We need leaders right now with great vision and determination to accept the challenges Few want more dams but what is / are the alternatives – better systems of urban water harvesting, tanks, stormwater reuse, storage etc – in my view the surface of all of this has only just been scratched

26th January 2011, 10:09 AM	#86
Eric Frei Admin - Owner Palm & Tree Services in Brisbane Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 12,994	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming I was talking to an engineer the other day and he says Wivenhoe shouldn't dump it's excess into the Brisbane river, it needs to go straight out to sea or elsewhere but not into the river system. Traditionally most dams are in rivers and usually at a point where there's a gorge so they have a narrow point to build a dam wall. The river system below the dam suffers and when the dam lets water out it floods downstream, nothing new in that typical technology. But the overflow (other than small regular releases for environmental purposes) needs to go elsewhere. Estimates are now that flood damage Australia wide is $20billion and the govt is thinking of a levy (tax), I doubt there's much interest or money in prevention and money will go into rebuilding things much the same for the next event. The Q100 regulation is 3.7m high, the river peaked at 4.46m high and the 1974 flood was 5.45m. How they get this 3.7m number and then label it the Q100 (1 in 100 year flood) is rather worrying eh. Residents home in on height regulation \| Courier Mail Attached Thumbnails __________________ Protect your rights to work - Join Australian Tree Association My businesses:- Qualified Brisbane Palm and Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding Brisbane \| Brisbane - Gold Coast Consulting Arborist

30th January 2011, 06:21 PM	#88
Eric Frei Admin - Owner Palm & Tree Services in Brisbane Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 12,994	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming Tonight Tropical Cyclone (TC) Anthony will hit the coast around Bowen. Another huge low pressure system near Vanuatu has just progressed to cyclone status named TC Yasi, it makes TC Anthony look like a cloud. It is coming, travelling west and intensifying, they estimate it will make our coast around Thursday this week. Attached Thumbnails __________________ Protect your rights to work - Join Australian Tree Association My businesses:- Qualified Brisbane Palm and Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding Brisbane \| Brisbane - Gold Coast Consulting Arborist

30th January 2011, 06:35 PM	#89
Jeff Darby Moderator - Previously known as JayD Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: TreeWorld, Sydney Australia Posts: 2,059	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming fingers crossed it dissipates between there and here... __________________ Member: Australian Tree Association Join the Australian Tree Association...Have your voice heard ! Arboriculture, A life long study for some, a passing phase for others © Jeffrey J Darby 2011

30th January 2011, 06:44 PM	#90
Eric Frei Admin - Owner Palm & Tree Services in Brisbane Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 12,994	Re: Queensland Summer 2010 Heavy Rains Coming It's a monster that thing, have a look at TC Anthony, that is cat 2, this TC Yasi is still building and most of the time they are there most powerful when they cross land. All prediction models have come to the same conclusion. Yes, I hope it fizzes out. TC Anthony is expected to dump 400mm of rain when it lands, imagine what TC Yasi would do? As a matter of interest Yasi is a tree. __________________ Protect your rights to work - Join Australian Tree Association My businesses:- Qualified Brisbane Palm and Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding Brisbane \| Brisbane - Gold Coast Consulting Arborist

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