One of the things we know about climate change is that it leads to more frequent and more intense extreme weather events – droughts, heat-waves, storms, floods. We’ve seen this in the past few years here in Australia with the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20 followed by record floods in Eastern Australia in 2022 and 2023.
In one way, these events don’t discriminate. We all live on the same planet, breathe the same air, drink the same water. Yet in another sense they do. The wealthier and better connected you are, the easier it is to deploy resources to adapt to the changes. If you have money, and own your own home, you can insulate and air-condition to avoid the heat, you can raise your house to get out of the floodwater, or else move to somewhere safer. You can pay for a temporary rental if your home is unlivable.
I’m fortunate in all these ways. Nonetheless, I live on the edge of the Brisbane River floodplain and have been here during two major floods, in January 2011 and February 2022. I suffered some small effects in my own home and watched as my neighbours suffered much worse. As we enter summer again, I’d like to offer some reflections on these experiences.
Emergency Warnings
The first essential in any emergency is that you get warning that it is coming. We are pretty information-literate and kept track of what happened in both events. In 2011 there were warnings of the coming flood on the nightly news, with the Premier fronting the updates, but it was hard to know what it meant for us exactly. We even had a police officer knock on our door and advise us to evacuate, but he had zero information – he had just been sent out to deliver a simple one-line message. We took his advice and went to stay with my sister on higher ground, but it was only that evening that we heard the Premier say on the news that the flood ‘could be bigger than 1974’, Brisbane’s worst flood in living memory.
We expected that after this experience the warnings would have been better and more detailed in 2022, but actually they were fewer and harder to find. Our saving grace was that we ourselves were better educated and followed the flood heights each day in full knowledge of what they meant. There was no police officer knocking on the door and the signal to evacuate was when the lights went out. Our neighbours, young low-income tenants, had no knowledge and few resources and we ended up driving them to the nearest evacuation centre in the pouring rain.
Volunteers
Another big contrast between 2011 and 2022 was the visibility of volunteers. In 2011, after we spent that first night away from home and learned how high the water might go, we went back the next morning and started moving as much of our stuff out of the house as we could. As the morning wore on we were flooded with helpers as well as water – some were friends who lived nearby, but many were complete strangers. Someone we’d never met arrived with a truck and we loaded stuff onto it. A huge Pasifika footballer helped us carry the fridge downstairs. By the time we called a halt mid-morning, with water lapping our thighs in the front yard, we had nearly emptied the house.
It was the same once the water subsided (having fortunately peaked well below the predicted heights). The first day of our clean-up we had more helpers than we needed and got all the immediate mud-hosing and scrubbing done on the first day. For days after, our street was choked with parked cars as people came along in their work clothes and wellies and strolled down to help people closer to the river. This surge of helpers was nick-named the ‘mud army’ but it was mostly just spontaneous – people heard about what had happened and turned up to see if they could help.
2022 was very different. The only people who arrived to help us as we readied the house for the flood were the family members whose stuff was stored downstairs. Fortunately once again we were in a much better position because we had a lot less stuff there. In the aftermath, there was no flood of volunteers. The only activity on the street came from our neighbours who had blocked the street entrance with wheelie bins to stop people trying to drive over the debris, and then shovelled it all up onto the footpath so people could drive through. Around the suburbs closest to me – Fairfield and Yeronga – the volunteer activity was far quieter, coordinated either via the local community centre (set up by the State Government and local residents after the 2011 floods) or via the local Facebook community groups. If someone needed help with a job they would post it to the group, and someone would offer to come along and help out.
Meanwhile, Council tried to formalise the Mud Army but it seems bureaucracy got in the way because it was never actually deployed. Of course Council itself was very active and helpful in the cleanup, with waste management staff regularly collecting from the flooded streets and securing Council infrastructure. We also saw some presence from the SES and the army as the waters rose, particularly in helping to evacuate a local aged care facility where the residents were trapped by flood water. But it seems there is no substitute for community-level action if you want a quick, flexible response! Incidentally there was something similar in the Lismore flood in late 2022, where local residents rescued their neighbours in tinnies while the army and SES somehow were not able to get in to help.
The recovery
After any disaster there is an immediate clean-up, followed by a longer-term recovery. The clean-up takes days or weeks, the recovery can take years.
Fortunately for us the recovery was quite simple. In 2011 it mainly consisted of cleaning mud off things, throwing out the (not very valuable) possessions we hadn't had time to move upstairs, and some electrical repairs as our switchboard had been submerged. In 2022 all we needed to do was hose out downstairs, move the few bits of furniture and equipment back into place and get the rellies to take their stuff elsewhere. We were back to normal within a couple of weeks both times.
Many of our lower-lying neighbours were not so fortunate. During both floods, any low-set house between us and the river got inundated and this meant hundreds of homes in our neighbourhood with major damage and big repair bills. 20 months after the most recent flood there are still unoccupied homes and skips full of water-damaged plaster.
However, in 2022 there is a very different attitude to 2011. The 2011 flood was the first major flood in almost 40 years. Some people raised their homes, but most just restored them pretty much as they had been before. The government set up a fund, supplemented by donations, to help people who were uninsured, but aside from that most people rebuilt as if it would be a long time before the next flood.
All this changed in 2022. With only 11 years between floods both residents and government were much more ready to accept that we needed changes. The government set up the Resilient Homes Fund, with an initial $740m (this has since been increased). The idea of this fund is that people can do one of three things, depending on which is appropriate for their home and location.
The government can buy their home for a fair value, allowing them to move elsewhere. These sites are then converted into public parkland.
They can get financial support to raise their home above the flood level.
They can get help to make it more resilient, for instance by refitting with waterproof materials.
In my community this has taken a while to show any results, but over the last couple of months we have started to see low-lying homes demolished, turfed and surrounded with bollards, and house-raising contractors around the streets lifting low-set homes two or three metres into the air. I’m assuming there will be a lot more of this over the coming year or two – my neighbour two doors down has done a deal to get his house raised but is still waiting.
Good news, bad news
Looking at the comparison between these two major events, it seems to me that there is good news, mixed news and bad news.
The good news is we are now at the point where both government and community understand that a changing climate requires adaptation. Government is prepared to put resources into this adaptation, and community members are keen to accept this help. This means that our suburbs, and the other flood affected areas around Brisbane and Ipswich, will look quite different in a couple of years’ time and be better placed to weather the next flood. This won’t be universal, because some people will still just try to return to the ‘old normal’, but they should be fewer in number and hence easier to help next time around.
The mixed news is that the flood of volunteers who appeared in 2011 didn’t reappear in 2022, but that those who did were much better coordinated. The combination of active community Facebook groups and the local Community Centre meant volunteers could be quickly sent to where they were needed. I’m not sure why the volunteers didn’t turn out in such large numbers. It could have just been that the 2022 flood was later in the year so everyone was back to school and work, whereas the 2011 one was squarely in the holiday season. But it also could have been that people were a bit weary of crises after the COVID pandemic and the Black Summer and just wanted to blank it out. If it’s the latter then that’s a worry because such events will keep happening. It just reinforces the importance of keeping up those community connections and supporting the community centre.
The bad news is that from what I saw, the government’s emergency response capacity seemed to have declined in the intervening 11 years. In 2011 the police were out in force door-knocking before the flood hit, and also out watching the entrances to the suburb as the water receded and screening people on the way through to deter looters and sightseers. I didn’t sight a single police officer in 2022. We found out all our information ourselves through tracking the BOM site and listening to the ABC. When I needed to get my neighbour to an evacuation centre, Council didn’t have our closest one listed and instead told me the closest one was 15 km away – it was only that someone had posted the local details on the Facebook page that I knew about it.
I am, of course, an educated person with resources and plenty of support around me. I have also been in this community for over 30 years and know the local resources and have local friends and family. For those who are poorer, less connected, have less literacy and are new to the community, there really needs to be a reliable to way for them to get clear information about what is going on.
Living with climate change
My own story is a little vignette of things that are going on across the nation and around the globe. As we adapt to climate change we need:
Strong well-connected communities that can support one another in times of crisis.
Well-funded, skilled emergency services that can click into gear quickly as a crisis approaches.
An understanding that each crisis is an opportunity to make long-term improvements to our resilience to reduce the impact of the following crisis.
Strategies for all these tasks that are particularly mindful of those with the least resources and capacity to respond.
None of this is beyond the capacity of a wealthy, well-governed nation like Australia. We are making a beginning, but we can keep getting better.
Resources
Here are some resources that might help you to be better prepared for the kind of natural disaster we went through.
For individuals, the Red Cross has a great set of resources on emergency preparedness – see here.
The Queensland Government has also published a simple seven step guide – check it out here.
For more about the Queensland Government’s Resilient Homes Fund check in out here.
With the latest phase of our ongoing housing ‘crisis’ in full swing there are people camped along the river banks in the very places that flooded less than two years ago. For some great ideas about how to support these people in the next flood, check out Collaborating 4 Inclusion’s Homelessness and Disaster resources.
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