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| Brisbane River flood 2011 at Gailes Caravan Park looking west towards the BP Service Station at the corner of Brisbane Road and Bertha Street Goodna. |
Flood engineers "accidentally" missed two crucial documents that contradict their evidence, an inquiry has been told.
The documents were missing from a final report compiled by four flood engineers on the operation of Wivenhoe Dam during the days leading up to last January's floods in Brisbane and Ipswich.
The missing documents indicate water releases from Wivenhoe dam were at lower levels than they should have been to protect urban areas from inundation.
The Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry is investigating whether the engineers used the wrong strategies, compounding the flood, and whether they colluded to cover it up.
Counsel assisting the commission Peter Callaghan grilled Jim Pruss, the employee dam operator SEQWater put in charge of project managing the report, during the inquiry on Saturday.
Mr Pruss told the inquiry he was not aware of the missing documents until recently.
He said he believed it was an accident.
"Thinking about the logistics those guys had to go through to put it together in a short period of time, it's possible and likely that it was an accident," Mr Pruss said.
"The report was 1300 odd pages long. There was lots of data to pull together.
"It's unfortunate that anything is missed. You would hope your quality control processes would pick it up."
Mr Callaghan questioned whether the engineers were objective when compiling the report.
"These people were preparing a report on what they themselves had done and there's going to be a natural tendency to "self-bias" in such reports," he said.
"Was there any consideration given (to this)?"
Mr Pruss said the engineers were the logical ones to put the report together because they were the only ones with the knowledge of what happened.
He said there was a team of third party experts who had access to the collation of data for the report.
"My mind was at ease because the engineers had a detail checking mechanism of the data and the words," Mr Pruss said.
"We also had the experts in there who could ask them whatever they wanted.
"I thought that process in itself was the balances."
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