Flood, sweat and tears: Inner city residents team up to learn lessons from past deluges
Residents of fast growing West End and South Brisbane have mobilised to ensure their suburbs are better able to cope with major flooding after the deluge in February last year exposed how ill-prepared some apartment complexes were to withstand inundation.
The scene at the end of Hoogley St, West End, in February last year. (Image: Resilient Kurilpa)
A group called Resilient Kurilpa – an alliance of existing community groups – have developed what it calls a toolkit of information and resources for body corporates and residents, particularly for those living in one of the mushrooming apartment complexes west of Montague Road.
The toolkit includes a template for a flood mitigation plan for apartment buildings aimed at ensuring better preparation for and recovery from big floods.
The group has estimated that more than 2100 dwellings on the Kurilpa peninsula were affected by the February floods, with many underground car parks flooded and residents trapped on upper floors of apartment buildings without power or access to the ground.
The impact of the disaster was a surprise to many, given the many mitigation recommendations that came out of the various inquiries into the 2011 floods.
Some apartment complexes had been built before the 2011 floods but many more have risen since as part of the West End and South Brisbane building boom. Residents have complained that post-2011 proposals such as raising electrical transformers from the basements of complexes to higher floors have not been implemented.
Local resident Mary Maher said the group was pushing for Brisbane City Council and the State Government to ensure better and more accurate warning systems and a better evacuation procedure.
“There are thousands of cars that have got to be moved just out of the high rise zone,” she said, adding that the role Montague Rd would play in such evacuations is unclear.
Maher said that 19 of the 58 apartment buildings on the Kurilpa peninsula were flood impacted last year, as well as 2000 of the 6000 residents. She said she had spoken to come residents who had been isolated in their apartments for days because without power they could not negotiate dark stairways to get down to the ground.
“In 2011 it was the tin and timber houses but in 2022 the real hardship was in the high rises,” she said.
“The powers that be should be taking this up as an issue more than they have been.”
