After major floods and cyclones, the Council commissions independent reviews into the Council's preparation and recovery. Here is my submission to the Tropical Cyclone Alfred review. Here is a pdf version.
14 April 2025
Dear Paul de Jersey,
Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission to the Brisbane City Council (BCC) Tropical Cyclone Alfred Review as the Councillor for the Paddington Ward.
I am a relatively new Councillor, with a mix of staff experience in my ward office team. Every suburb of this ward suffers from some form of flooding during less severe weather events than 2011, 2022, and Tropical Cyclone (TC) Alfred. Of particular note are the suburbs of Milton and Herston, in which multiple properties have been purchased via the Voluntary Home Purchase Scheme. This is the experience that informs the remainder of this submission.
This submission will cover 3 key elements:
- BCC services;
- BCC planning arrangements; and
- The BCC response approach.
The rest of this submission should be read with the knowledge that Brisbane was fortunate, because TC Alfred made landfall at night on Saturday 08/03/2025, instead of midnight between 06/03/2025 and 07/03/2025 as expected, and the system had been downgraded to a Tropical Low by the time it passed over inner Brisbane.
BCC Services
BCC, in partnership with the State government, is obliged to provide shelter to homeless people during severe weather events. During TC Alfred, BCC was not prepared for this. TC Alfred took place in the context of a rental and housing crisis, in which neither BCC nor the State government has adequately funded public, social, and emergency housing.
On the one hand, BCC did not prepare enough emergency shelters, and on the other, BCC and the State government did not inform homeless people residing in parks who are known to our office and other colleagues. BCC needs to thoroughly plan for sheltering homeless people in Brisbane, including informing about and potentially even transporting them to shelter locations.
Recommendation 1: create plans to inform and shelter all homeless people within Brisbane during severe weather events.
BCC sandbagging and waste service centres are generally centralised. During business-as-usual, there are 5 sandbag and 4 resource recovery locations across Brisbane, for a city that had 1.24 million residents in 2021, and has grown rapidly since. As TC Alfred approached, the Council expanded to 10 sandbagging locations at the peak before TC Alfred made landfall, and expanded to 6 resource recovery locations. This equates to at least 124,000 residents per sandbagging location, and at least 207,000 residents per resource recovery location.
These ratios of residents to location proved problematic. From Monday to Wednesday (03/03-05/03/2025), wait times at sandbagging locations fluctuated enormously. One of my staff waited in line for 2 hours after work at Newmarket, with some residents reporting waits exceeding 6 hours.
At the same time, my office had tens of requests to help with green waste removal during the clean-up. These residents had never had to remove so much green waste from their property at once, and were struggling to transport it to the resource recovery locations.
Recommendation 2: prepare more temporary sandbagging and waste service locations.
Reduced capacity for routine maintenance also contributed to a dramatically higher preparation burden on BCC than would otherwise be the case. Stormwater gully and pipe cleaning, tree trimming, and in one case removing a fallen tree that was reported in December were all outstanding maintenance tasks that my office was urgently requesting from BCC during the TC Alfred preparation. By significantly reducing maintenance budgets, BCC is becoming less prepared for severe weather events.
Recommendation 3: increase BCC maintenance budgets.
In terms of information services, the BCC emergency dashboard had missteps. Overland flow projections initially were not included in the predicted flooding overlay. Overland flow projections were then added on Friday, with no distinction from other types of flooding. This addition was made when most businesses and services had already closed. It created a panic in residents who were now being told that they would be impacted by flooding, with little information about what type of flooding this would be, nor available services to help prepare.
Recommendation 4: include overland flow projections in the BCC emergency dashboard as a distinct layer.
Additionally, this projection was based on the pre-prepared 1% probability overland flow flood modelling. This was not based on a real-time prediction. Experts have advised my office that real-time modelling systems do exist, such as ‘rain-on-grid’ models. BCC should be investing in these modelling tools to prepare for future severe weather events.
Recommendation 5: invest in a real-time overland flow flood modelling system for Brisbane.
The BCC emergency dashboard also lacks water level height integration, meaning that residents along creeks and the river were routinely swapping between the emergency dashboard and BOM river level websites. Incorporating this river and creek height information into the BCC emergency dashboard could provide better information access. The Sunshine Coast Council disaster hub already integrates this information.
Recommendation 6: integrate BOM river and creek water levels into the BCC emergency dashboard.
Finally, BCC parking enforcement information was not provided clearly. For both the suspension of, and re-introduction of parking enforcement surrounding TC Alfred, BCC did not clearly communicate this to residents, so my Ward office and I were providing this update separately.
Recommendation 7: plan for and communicate the relaxation of BCC parking enforcement surrounding severe weather events.
BCC Planning Arrangements
BCC should take steps to ensure that residents are less exposed to the risks of future severe weather events. Dwellings and businesses located in high-risk flooding areas put far greater strain on BCC, State government, and volunteer resources during recovery, and increase the cost of insurance citywide. BCC needs to be planning towards minimising the impacts of severe weather.
As recommended by the 2022 Brisbane Flood review, BCC should direct pressure to the State and Federal governments for funding, apply for grants where they exist such as the Disaster Ready Fund, and reinstate a voluntary home purchase scheme.
Recommendation 8: seek funding to restart the voluntary home purchase scheme for the most flood-affected homes.
To stop further development, and thus greater impacts from severe weather, BCC should also rezone properties that include Flood Planning Area (FPA) 1 and 2 to open space, sport and recreation, conservation, or environmental management. This can be timed such that it does not stop existing households from modifying their homes for resilience, but it must stop any greater intensity of residential or commercial land use in these extremely flood-prone areas.
Recommendation 9: rezone properties within FPA 1 and 2 to open space, sport and recreation, conservation, or environmental management.
BCC should also review and increase the heights above 1% AEP events required for habitable rooms and key infrastructure, such as electrical systems. During more complex weather events such as TC Alfred, several mains services are likely to be impacted, but recovery becomes far more difficult if building systems are also damaged by accompanying flooding.
Recommendation 10: for habitable rooms and key infrastructure, increase the heights above 1% AEP events required within the Flood Overlay code.
The BCC Response Approach
The 2022 Brisbane Flood review discussed the limitations and shortfalls of BCC ‘Mud Army 2.0’, in which BCC attempted to formalise and coordinate the volunteer response to the floods. Unfortunately in response to TC Alfred, BCC attempted to coordinate volunteer efforts again via the ‘Ute Army’. This section will examine the failings by working backwards from implementation, to the actual policy tools that BCC has available.
The Ute Army was poorly implemented. It was announced 36 hours after the weather event. Potential volunteers or assistance recipients could not sign up in advance, and many residents were already beginning to clean up. The actual requirements to volunteer were poorly communicated, so people would put their hand up before being disqualified by insurance requirements. Ward Offices were made responsible for connecting volunteers to assistance recipients without any forewarning, so for example, the Chandler Ward disclosed via an email to Volunteering Coordinator of Brisbane Local Recovery Group that they had no access to volunteers, seeking advice on what to do. Put simply, it did not work.
The current BCC approach to interacting with volunteer recovery efforts does not match with the policy tools and compliance regime that BCC has and works within, nor how spontaneous volunteer responses occur as a phenomenon.
When BCC directly engages volunteers, BCC requires its volunteers to be trained or insured to minimise potential liabilities. This is understandable, but creates a time or administrative barrier to many would-be volunteers. An alternative approach where BCC simply acts as a ‘matcher’ between volunteers and people needing assistance would require a huge administrative effort that BCC is not capable of in the midst of a wider recovery coordination effort.
BCC is fundamentally not structured in a way that allows it to coordinate thousands of volunteers in a spontaneous disaster recovery response. BCC is currently staffed by thousands of specific field experts, and is structured to provide specialised service delivery.
But BCC does have options available that match its structure and policy tools. As such a large entity, BCC could offer disaster recovery skill training sessions in partnership with the SES, such as chainsaw use and ute loading. BCC could improve their core service provision even further to facilitate neighbourhood or suburb green waste pickups from predetermined locations. BCC could increase their community grants budget, so that more community groups can form, and both connect residents and lend a hand during clean-ups.
Recommendation 11: redirect resilience and recovery resources currently dedicated to recovery volunteer coordination towards supportive core service expansions.
BCC could make use of the Councillors and Ward offices to connect local community groups to people who need support, so long as these responsibilities are negotiated prior to extreme weather events. As local representative offices, they hold more local relationships with residents, community groups, organisations, and local businesses than BCC as a wider body. They do not have the capacity to coordinate hundreds of volunteers, but they can help to connect people to services and each other, so long as these Councillors and offices know that this is their role.
Recommendation 12: in advance, negotiate explicit expectations and responsibilities of Councillors and Ward offices before, during, and after extreme weather events.
BCC has the potential to facilitate and support a lot of volunteering during a disaster recovery, but the current model of directing from the top just cannot work.
Recommendations
That BCC:
- Create plans to inform and shelter all homeless people within Brisbane during severe weather events;
- Prepare more temporary sandbagging and waste service locations;
- Increase maintenance budgets;
- Include overland flow projections in the BCC emergency dashboard as a distinct layer;
- Invest in a real-time overland flow flood modelling system for Brisbane;
- Integrate BOM river and creek water levels into the BCC emergency dashboard;
- Plan for and communicate the relaxation of BCC parking enforcement surrounding severe weather events;
- Seek funding to restart the voluntary home purchase scheme for the most flood-affected homes;
- Rezone properties within FPA 1 and 2 to open space, sport and recreation, conservation, or environmental management;
- For habitable rooms and key infrastructure, increase the heights above 1% AEP events required within the Flood Overlay code;
- Redirect resilience and recovery resources currently dedicated to recovery volunteer coordination towards supportive core service expansions; and
- In advance, negotiate explicit expectations and responsibilities of Councillors and Ward offices before, during, and after extreme weather events.
Warm regards
Seal Chong Wah
Councillor for Paddington Ward