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| Smiths Rd Goodna looking east as the floodwaters of 2011 recede |
WE'RE still no closer to knowing whether the southeast's dams were properly managed during the 2011 flood and whether any of the flooding of thousands of properties in Brisbane and Ipswich was avoidable.
After a narrow, five-month re-examination of some of the evidence by the CMC, all we know that's new is that there was a central flaw in the operations manual for the dams.
The CMC has done what it was asked, but as its chairman points out, that didn't include the "critical issue" of the circumstances surrounding the massive emergency releases of water on January 11, 2011, that caused properties to flood.
All the releases up to that point were too small to cause any significant damage.
It was a big flood, but only a fraction of the size of those the dams were built to withstand.
We don't even know what effect this flaw in the manual might have had on the dams' operation. All we know is it was a big enough problem to possibly explain why the dam engineers got themselves into knots when writing up their account of events.
Who signed off on this flaw?
Engineer John Tibaldi wrote the manual, according to the retired judge hired by the CMC to take a fresh look at the evidence. But people higher up the chain in Seqwater and Government departments approved the document.
Some of these bureaucrats provided statements to the floods inquiry, very few were questioned. Many of them are still in high-paying Government jobs.
The floods inquiry previously identified a couple of "technical" breaches of the document.
Not enough heed was paid to weather forecasts and one of the engineer's qualifications were out of date, it found. Oh well, never mind.
Premier Campbell Newman was keen to point out ahead of the March election how "murky" things were becoming for Anna Bligh each time the media peeled a layer away from her flood defences.
He pledged not to force people to have to engage expensive lawyers to get treated fairly. But that was easy when he didn't hold the purse strings and wasn't facing a possible liability of hundreds of millions of dollars - or more - over the floods.
His tune has changed now, after class action lawyers muscled up and Government lawyers and Seqwater's heavyweight insurers weighed in.
There are plenty of reasons why no-one has yet properly explained why these poor engineers, the good soldiers of Turbot St, found themselves in that terrible position in January 2011.
After a narrow, five-month re-examination of some of the evidence by the CMC, all we know that's new is that there was a central flaw in the operations manual for the dams.
The CMC has done what it was asked, but as its chairman points out, that didn't include the "critical issue" of the circumstances surrounding the massive emergency releases of water on January 11, 2011, that caused properties to flood.
All the releases up to that point were too small to cause any significant damage.
It was a big flood, but only a fraction of the size of those the dams were built to withstand.
We don't even know what effect this flaw in the manual might have had on the dams' operation. All we know is it was a big enough problem to possibly explain why the dam engineers got themselves into knots when writing up their account of events.
Who signed off on this flaw?
Engineer John Tibaldi wrote the manual, according to the retired judge hired by the CMC to take a fresh look at the evidence. But people higher up the chain in Seqwater and Government departments approved the document.
Some of these bureaucrats provided statements to the floods inquiry, very few were questioned. Many of them are still in high-paying Government jobs.
The floods inquiry previously identified a couple of "technical" breaches of the document.
Not enough heed was paid to weather forecasts and one of the engineer's qualifications were out of date, it found. Oh well, never mind.
Premier Campbell Newman was keen to point out ahead of the March election how "murky" things were becoming for Anna Bligh each time the media peeled a layer away from her flood defences.
He pledged not to force people to have to engage expensive lawyers to get treated fairly. But that was easy when he didn't hold the purse strings and wasn't facing a possible liability of hundreds of millions of dollars - or more - over the floods.
His tune has changed now, after class action lawyers muscled up and Government lawyers and Seqwater's heavyweight insurers weighed in.
There are plenty of reasons why no-one has yet properly explained why these poor engineers, the good soldiers of Turbot St, found themselves in that terrible position in January 2011.
www.CourierMail.com.au
22.8.12
