Palm Island mayor Alf Lacey discusses recovery efforts and need for a recovery centre
Despite having a landslide and its power and water cut, Palm Island is recovering well after days of intense weather. Read why its mayor is ramping up pressure on the government.
Townsville
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After Palm Island successfully weathered the worst of the intense NQ weather event, with power and water supplies now restored, the island’s mayor has called for governments to get moving on delivering a long-awaited cyclone shelter and disaster recovery centre.
Mayor and Local Disaster Management Group chair Alf Lacey said the very intense rain “created havoc” in the community in terms of power outages, landslides, the water supply being cut, and damage to the local road network, which was starting to get “chewed up”.
All regular services were starting to resume after all contact with the mainland was cut off on Friday, due to a “major landslide” on the eastern side of the island.
After almost two days without power, a Ergon crew which flew into the island was able to restore the power supply on Monday at 4pm.
He said there was a blowout of a compressor system for one of the water pumps at the water treatment plant after the power was restored, which has since been repaired, restoring functionality to the water supply, water treatment and sewerage system.
“Our water treatment plant is not back at 100 per cent and the community must conserve water,” Mr Lacey said.
“We are working on further repairs today and are planning for the worst case scenario, which is we can’t supply water to the community from Wednesday morning.
“If this eventuates, we will supply bottled water for the community and work with organisations and services to meet their needs.”
With the island’s regular supply route through Halifax and Lucinda impacted by flooding, he said the LDMG were working to source supplies from the Port of Townsville, with the ferries and airport also returning to normal operations.
“Hopefully we’re at the end of the worst part (of the weather). I’ve also now stood up the (local disaster) recovery group at 9am Monday, which generally takes over after the disaster group, (and am expecting) to stand down the Palm Island Local Disaster Management Group,” he said.
“Our role now is to start moving back to normality and get the community back functioning again and we’ve seen that as of today, here’s some supermarkets fully stocked and open, health services are online, as are all the social services and other services in the community, kicking back in and getting on with what needs to be done for the community.”
Mr Lacey said this latest challenging weather reinforced the need for Palm Island to have a recovery centre and cyclone shelter funded and built.
“I call upon, certainly the Queensland Government and the Commonwealth government to pay some attention to Palm Island in terms of our request, which has been on the cards for the last 10 years,” he said.
“(There’s been) numerous studies, numerous reports. They’ve got them, it’s just a matter of the commonwealth and the state making a decision for our community, because it’s really important.
“(Given what) we’ve experienced over the last 20 years or more, we have to prepare for future events, and a cyclone shelter and recovery centre would go a long way in addressing the emergency management needs of this community.”
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Originally published as Palm Island mayor Alf Lacey discusses recovery efforts and need for a recovery centre
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