Cairns Regional Council defends failure of flood pump in Gordonvale
Council has defended the failure of a flood mitigation pump which stopped working when Ergon cut power to inundated homes, but victims say more need to be done to stop regular flooding of the area.
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Council has defended the failure of a flood mitigation pump that stopped working when Ergon cut power to inundated homes, but victims say more need to be done to stop regular flooding of the area.
On Wednesday morning heavy rain caused O’Leary Creek in Gordonvale to break its banks.
Roads and homes on Campbell St and Klarwein Cl were flooded on a scale residents likened to the historic deluge following Cyclone Jasper in December 2023.
Police officers went door-to-door in a torrential downpour, evacuating the elderly, and residents did their best to sandbag homes against rising flood water.
Klarwein Cl resident Heinz Brettner said he had logged repeated complaints and sent numerous emails to Cairns Regional Council about the ongoing flood problem but only received a response on Wednesday after threatening to contact A Current Affair.
“It was a king tide, as well as the flash flood it all hit together, it was a perfect storm,” he said.
“This has happened four times and we’ve complained many times, but never got any response, and the s--- just keeps happening.”
As the water got higher, just before midday emergency services directed Ergon Energy to switch off the power for public safety reasons.
According to the runtime counter on the electric pump, the device operated for 4 hours and 30 minutes before the power was cut off at 12pm.
Cairns Regional Council did concede the flood pump was rendered useless by the power outage.
“However, this was not why the flooding occurred as usually the water would still run-off downstream into nearby O’Leary Creek,” a spokesman said.
“Even if the pump station had been operating, with the volume of water spilling from O’Leary Creek, there was nowhere for the pump to push water away.
“Historically, the continuity of power supply to this site has negated the consideration of backup power generation.”
Campbell St resident Gareth Innes said the area floods two or three times a year after heavy rain but didn’t necessarily consider any agency to be at fault.
“It was a freak of nature but maybe (council) needs to dig the culvert deeper and possibly get a bigger pump,” he said.
A frustrated Mr Brettner said his 87-year-old mother Jubilee Brettner had recently spent $75,000 cleaning up and replacing furniture destroyed by the post Cyclone Jasper flood event only to have ankle deep water through the house again this week.
“The whole house was gutted, we got a skip bin and threw everything away,” he said.
Mr Brettner claimed the trench was not of adequate size to cater for large water volumes and needed to be improved to help the bottleneck drain vast amounts of run-off from nearby cane fields.
Council stated disaster preparedness is continually in the process of being reassessed and the agency would evaluate if there is a need to review provisions at the Gordonvale creek.
Up to 940mm have been recorded in the Mulgrave and Russell catchments since Monday.
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Originally published as Cairns Regional Council defends failure of flood pump in Gordonvale
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