Brisbane flood: Annastacia Palaszczuk defends severe weather response

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has launched a vigorous defence of authorities amid community anger that residents were not warned soon enough about the magnitude of the weather event over the past six days. It comes as the Bureau of Meteorology said some areas received a year’s worth of rain in a few days.

The Premier has forcefully defended authorities against community anger they weren’t warned soon enough of the unfolding flooding disaster across southeast Queensland.

Annastacia Palaszczuk said people were always given the most up-to-date warnings, but the weather event continued to defy forecasts.

“It has been fast and it has been furious and it has had a big impact, that is the facts,” she said.

Ms Palaszczuk said neither she, nor anyone else could “control Mother Nature”.

“This is Mother Nature ... and sometimes they throw stuff at us and we got to deal with it,” she said.

She said the emergency services on the frontline had been doing “the best they possibly can” and “we should be thanking them from the bottom of our hearts” for everything they had done, particularly in saving people from floodwaters.

She said she wanted Queenslanders to understand the sheer volume of rainfall experienced.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at a press conference at the Kedron Emergency Services Complex in Brisbane. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

“We have always said that this was an extreme weather event,” she said.

“However, the Bureau predictions were rapidly changing.”

She said forecasts from Thursday were for conditions to ease, but that didn’t happen.

“In fact, that system stayed over the southeast,” she said.

“... What happened here was that everyone expected the conditions to ease but they didn’t and this rain bomb stayed over the entire southeast and it had a big impact on the catchments and the streams and everything that went into the southeast of our state.

“Now that is unpredictable. No one, not even the Bureau, saw that coming.”

Ms Palaszczuk praised the “huge response effort”, pointing out that authorities were usually dealing with an event over one council, or a few councils.

“This has been all of the councils in the southeast having to deal with this issue at the same time,” she said.

Flood waters pictured in Milton after massive downpours across Brisbane. (Image/Josh Woning)

The Premier said she understood it was tough for residents.

“I go into people’s homes and see it,” she said. “It is absolutely heartbreaking but it is Mother Nature.”

The Bureau of Meteorology’s Diane Eadie said some of the rainfall totals experienced over the last few days were the same as what would be expected over a year.

She said Mt Glorious, for example, had recorded 1.5m of rain over the past week.

“And we’ve seen similar conditions across all of southeast Queensland,” she said.

“A number of locations have recorded in excess of 700mm in periods of 24 hours so the significance of this event can’t be understated.”