Tweed GM denies $8m trucks could have been saved

By Luis Feliu

Tweed Shire Council’s general manager Troy Green has fended off claims that most of the shire’s eight-million-dollar plus fleet of trucks and other plant destroyed during last week’s historical flood which devastated Murwillumbah, could have been saved.

Council’s fleet of trucks and loaders is insured, with the expected value of loss is $8 million, which Mr Green said was around 80 per cent of the fleet or 90 per cent if mowers, whipper snippers, chainsaws and the like were included.

Flood levels exceeded the huge 1954 flood in most places: six lives were lost in the shire and the cost to business, farming, residential and ratepayers is in the tens of millions of dollars.

A former council staffer claims council managers didn’t act swiftly or urgently enough to save the trucks and plant, given official warning of moderate to major flooding in the days preceding the huge rain whipped up by ex-tropical Cyclone Debbie.

The ex staffer told Echonetdaily the trucks and machinery were not moved across town to an elevated site but ‘simply parked up in the low-lying Buchanan Street depot and subsequently inundated in the flood’.

‘Council had ample time to safeguard the shire’s fleet, we knew for a week the rain was coming’. the source said.

‘If the management and employees responsible for managing the catchment had examined the river gauges on the Tweed Council’s own web page as early as mid morning Thursday, March 30, they would have witnessed level rises that dwarfed anything we had witnessed in the past, and that was before the expected 400mm deluge of rain that the BOM was predicting overnight on the Thursday, March 30-31’.

‘If I could monitor the levels from my home, then the people being paid good money to should also have done so,’ the ex staffer said.

‘By as early as 8.30pm Thursday I contacted a couple of friends who had shops in the main street and we met and worked through the night raising stock etc.

‘I predicted the town to be inundated but fortunately I was wrong… by 10cm!

BOM advice

But Mr Green refutes the claim, saying ‘the fact of the matter is that all fleet was moved from the low lying back pad (the site where trucks and loaders are usually kept) to the Buchanan Street depot in anticipation that flood waters would be minor to moderate as per the advice of BOM’.

The day before the deluge (Wednesday, March 29) the the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) issued flood warnings for the northern rivers in the wake of the cyclone’s movement producing lots of storms and rain thropughout the east coast.

Mr Green said the unexpected massive flood not just affected council’s assets but ‘every other business in that area’.
(Large businesses such as J H Williams in the industrial zone which makes up most of Buchanan Street lost massive amounts of stock and equipment when floodwaters a metre deep hit them.)

He said the ‘changes to a classification of major flood happened very quickly’ and Buchanan Street had also ‘not flooded to anyone’s memory’.

‘All staff including managers were in the work place on Thursday and decisions made to move plant to the higher Buchanan Street were followed,’ he said.
‘Council, many residents in South Murwillumbah and the entire business community in South Murwillumbah and Uki would have appreciated the forewarning [of major flooding]. We certainly were not the only business to lose plant and equipment from this flood event.
‘All managers were also at work (either at the Tweed office or Murwillumbah) on Friday, Friday night, and over the entire weekend. Some such as myself were not able to get home due to flood waters. Several staff also worked through the night at Chinderah depot and were flooded in.
‘Staff living in the north of the shire were advised to leave Murwillumbah and work from Tweed office or from home Thursday afternoon when the flood level reached 4.2m as per council’s policy.
‘It is at these levels that routes to the north begin to be cut as per minor flooding. (At 4.5m it is too late – access to the north is cut). Note the flood reached 6.2m which is higher than ’54.

Flood-planning appreciated

Mr Green added that ‘the success of the flood planning also needs to be told: for example the town levee worked as planned, the major storm water works in the main street undertaken some 18 months ago were a huge success and you probably remember the criticism council faced by some businesses at the time.

‘New developments such as the IGA and Uki pub where officers were criticised for slowing up and increasing the cost of development escaped unscathed by this event.

‘The new Murwillumbah Community Centre escaped unscathed and it is where the Recovery Centre is now operating from.

‘In fact Brett Bugg from the IGA came and hugged me this week and thanked us for making him build his shop at the height he did, exclaiming that he feels like cracking open a bottle of champagne with Vince and Danny (planning and flood staff).

‘What went wrong – large sections of the town, industrial area and rural villages when settled were not privy to historical events and did not have the flood modelling tools of today.

‘In my office, I have pictures of the 1921 flood, the 1954 flood, the 1974 flood and sadly I see history repeating itself. The town levee has been a success but unfortunately we are not able to levee the entire catchment.

‘Therefore I think government as a whole and the community need to discuss where we develop and how we can provide incentives for people and businesses to remain in the valley but assist with relocation from the flood plain.

‘With climate change and more frequent high-intensity events such as we experienced, we may well need different strategies to lessen the social, environmental and economic impact into the future,’ Mr Green said.