One person died, four homes were destroyed, thousands were damaged and nearly 90,000 people lost power on the night of December 25 when a destructive “derecho” – a short but extremely powerful straight-line storm – lashed the city’s north.

Believed at the time by many to be a tornado, it brought wind gusts of more than 106km/h – the equivalent of a category 2 cyclone – thunder, lighting strikes and large hailstones.

It ripped the roofs from houses and shattered windows on the Gold Coast and Tamborine Mountain.

Reflecting a year on, Mr Tate said the prospect of another serious disaster haunts him.

“It does (keep him awake at night),” he said.

“Interestingly last year the warning was for a bushfire and we did a lot of training to get ready for various bushfires and yet we had the biggest storm in the north of our city.

“The training wasn’t wasted and I would say that we’ll fare better should category two-type wind come along again.

“A major lesson we learned was in setting priorities, especially with electricity which went down – we have to restore it quickly, especially for the utilities with the water and water pumping stations.

“If you have no power there, you have an additional disaster.

“Our Energex staff worked around the clock with the SES to untangle the cables and get them back up.”

The first warning of a storm arrived from the Bureau of Meteorology at 7.57pm, with the expectation it would hit around 8.50pm.

The threat advisory was updated for severe thunderstorms and destructive winds at 8.25pm, with the storm arriving shortly thereafter.

It lasted just 15 minutes but it left behind a devastating aftermath.

Council’s on-call disaster team was activated at 9.23pm, with the first teams arriving at the management centre by 9.47pm.

The scale of the disaster soon became clear.

Helensvale resident Robyn Carman, 59, was killed on Discovery Drive just hundreds of metres from her home when a large branch from a tree fell on her.

More than 73 roads were inaccessible, blocked by fallen trees or debris from wrecked houses, 82,946 homes were without power and mobile communication was difficult with towers damaged, impacting on the ability for people to contact triple-0.

That night the Queensland Fire Department and SES received 370 calls for help.

By the sunrise on Boxing Day, with the heavy rain having stopped, more than 90,183 houses were without power, 12 of the city’s 22 traffic cameras were offline and the SES was dealing with 765 jobs.

It took 10 days to restore power across the city.

Council’s response was immediate. Drones and helicopters were used to assess the damage. Six community centres, eight recovery hubs and two evacuation centres were opened to help the affected, while libraries were opened across extended hours to allow affected people relief from the extreme heatwave conditions, with temperatures hitting 35.3 degrees.

The mammoth Operation Clean-up was launched in the days afterwards to remove the debris.

In the year since the disaster, the council had done 79 face-to face community education events, developed five disaster plans to help those affected by heavy rainfall or bushfires, and a series of training exercises.

Mr Tate said the council had established closer relations with the state government to improve operations and co-ordination during events and had instituted other changes.

“All in all, we did an assessment and what we found was that we, over the years, had planted trees that were small but they grew and grew to the extent that the wind made them intermingle with the power lines and that’s why they were easily downed, so the takeaway lessons was to do a tree audit, especially underneath the power lines. So we’ve done that,” he said.

“The other takeaway was that newly established connectivity with the church groups, the volunteers to the church groups were great because they gave comfort, door knocked and they even distributed food.

“They cooked their own food and took it to places where people needed it, so we have now another card up our sleeve that is the volunteers among the church community and that number has now grown.

“I felt that we live in a city where helping each other when times are tough is truly the Gold Coast. I see so many neighbours helping next door neighbours.”

Mr Tate was also critical of the short notice the BOM gave of the storms and urged it to step up its operations and try new, more accurate software to predict storms.

“I still don’t have the confidence in the BOM – the inaccuracy, the delays,” he said.

“The more they don’t get it right, people will start thinking that it’s the boy crying wolf and in this case is crying storm.

“That’s what keeps me up at night because when I get the (warning) text I’m going, okay, as the person who stands up our disaster management unit and getting people out of bed to go to our disaster centre, I’ve got to think twice whether I’m going to get 20 people going in, in the middle of the night.

“If it’s real, then we’re on the momentum to tackle the disaster as the sun rises.”

For Premier David Crisafulli, the anniversary is a personal moment of reflection, with his electorate of Broadwater at the epicentre of the damage.

In the days after the storm he helped businesses which had lost power and all their stock.

Mr Crisafulli said the storm was a “a tragic reminder about the power and ferocity of Mother Nature”.

“The scale of destruction – with homes and schools impacted, critical infrastructure damaged – was unlike anything many on the Gold Coast had seen for decades,” he said.

“But what we saw in the aftermath is Queenslanders showing what they are all about.

“The communities banding together and neighbours helping neighbours was inspiring and something I was proud to be a part of.

“There’s no way for us to stop natural disasters, but I’m committed to ensuring we prepare better, rebuild stronger and recover faster moving into the storm season ahead.”