Brisbane floods: Mayor calls for residents to join ‘ute army’ in clean-up bid

Brisbane’s Lord Mayor called for residents to work together to set up a “Ute Army” to help deal with the huge clean-up in the aftermath of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has asked Brisbane residents to work together to set up a “Ute Army” to help with the aftermath of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

Temporary green waste satellite sites have been set up at Whites Hill Reserve, Camp Hill and the Mount Coot-Tha car park at Sir Samuel Griffith Drive.

The Resource Recovery Centres at 101 Upper Kedron Road, Ferny Grove and 728 Tilley Road, Chandler will continue to accept green waste for free.

Chrissy Italia at her home in Cullen st Windsor Flooding. Pic Annette Dew

The clean up begins after rain fell all day Sunday. Picture David Clark

“We know that there are many people that will want to get started on cleaning up their yards with green waste,” he said.

“The Brisbane City Council crews and contractors will be continuing their process of cleaning up and removing trees that have been damaged across the city. Trees on footpaths, trees in parks, trees in public areas, we will be removing those and that’s a big job.

“But we also know that many residents in their yards have green waste and material that needs to be removed as well.”

Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner is calling for a big community response as the clean-up begins.

Mr Schrinner said there were a number of residents that had too much to fit in their boot and their green bin.

“They’ll need help. And that’s why we’re calling on the people of Brisbane that have Utes to come together and form a Ute army so that we can help people in need, get this green waste and get it recycled.” he said.

Peter Heywood cleans up his property he only moved into 10 days ago. Picture David Clark

“One of the things that we have seen in every single natural disaster in Brisbane and in Queensland is that the community comes together.

“They want to help their neighbours. They want to help their friends, and we know that will happen organically, but we also want to help to support these efforts.”

Mr Schrinner said there was likely to be four or five more locations added to the initial two.

He also said kerbside pick-ups for residents who experienced flooding will occur next Monday to allow people to clean up right through to the weekend.

“We’re asking people not to put the green waste onto kerb because we don’t want that getting mixed up with the flood waste that can’t be recycled so we do want to keep them separate,” he said.

“And that’s why we are also encouraging the free green waste tipping at resource recovery centres and we’re also encouraging the Ute army to get out and help.”

Mr Schrinner said it was too early to tell how much the cost of the clean up would be as Council needed to assess the damage in the coming days but noted in 2022 it cost council alone $330 million.

Mr Schrinner said Queenslanders were adequately warned that there was more to come after Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred was downgraded and stood by his comments from the weekend where he said Brisbane “dodged a bullet”.

“If we had been hit with a tropical cyclone category two the damage would have been so much worse, we saw that there was significantly more damage on the Gold Coast,” he said.

“And so that also could have happened to Brisbane if we had been hit by a category two cyclone in the end.

“So based on that sort of worst case scenario that we put forward based on projections of what it could have been, the flooding was at a lower level.

“So I am actually grateful that occurred. I’m grateful that the damage wasn’t as bad as it was expected.

Originally published as Brisbane floods: Mayor calls for residents to join ‘ute army’ in clean-up bid