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Brisbane floods flyover
EXPERTS for Maurice Blackburn
lawyers have released an animated flyover of areas they say should not have been flooded during the 2011 disaster. |
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| Map of flood-affected areas of Brisbane, released by a law firm planning a class action on behalf of affected residents. |
THOUSANDS of homes in Brisbane and Ipswich were needlessly inundated during the 2011 flood crisis due to "negligent" dam operators, independent modelling commissioned by class action lawyers has found.
Law firm Maurice Blackburn and Australia's biggest litigation funder IMF Australia have today released details of the modelling and say it shows entire suburbs - such as Chelmer and Rosalie - should have escaped unscathed had the Wivenhoe and Somerset dams been operated in a “reasonably competent way”.
IMF Australia executive director John Walker said the firm had a budget of more than $10 million to launch a compensation claim against the state of Queensland, which was shaping up to be the nation's largest.
IMF and Maurice Blackburn today said a 12-month, $1 million investigation, using United States experts, showed the flooding was much worse than it should have been. This will form the basis of a class action, as long as they can get enough people to sign up.
So far, 2000 people have registered as clients and 2000 more have indicated their interest.
Mr Walker reiterated an earlier assertion that the claim could be worth more than $500m, much more than Australia's current biggest class action - a $200m settlement in the case by shareholders against Centro.
He said there was an expectation that insurers would also join the flood class action against the government, but could not say whether any had given a firm indication they would join.
Maurice Blackburn class actions principal Damian Scattini said that for flood victims, the trauma continued, two years on.
“(They're living it) everyday, relentlessly,” Mr Scattini said.
He said the key claim against the operators was that they did not release enough water from the dam, soon enough.
“Over 300km of the river system, there are vast areas that were flooded that should not have been flooded whatsoever,” he said.
He said 29,000 homes and businesses had been flooded during the disaster and Mr Walker said “thousands” of those should not have been inundated at all.
However, the pair declined to identify the US experts who had conducted the modelling, and much of the detail in their expert report.
IMF said investigations had determined the dam “was not operated to the standard expected of a reasonably competently dam operator in all of the circumstances”.
It said independent US experts engaged to carry out the investigation had identified two key failures:
- a failure to use rainfall forecasts in making decisions about (dam) operating strategies; and
- a failure to preserve a reasonable amount of Wivenhoe's storage capacity to provide optimum protection of urbanised areas from inundation.
In a release to the Australian Securities Exchange today, IMF Australia said:
“Based on these investigations, IMF has formed an opinion that material flooding of a large number of properties down river from the Wivenhoe dam would not have occurred had Wivenhoe been operated during the flood event to the standard expected of a reasonably competent dam operator in all of the circumstances.”
Mr Walker said the investigation's findings marked the end of the due diligence process for the class action being pursued by Maurice Blackburn.
He said the next stage was to formally establish the level of loss among affected residents, and if there was sufficient interest to proceed with the class action.
But Mr Walker said he was extremely confident it would go ahead.
The next step will be contacting all residents in areas the IMF investigation identified as having suffered unnecessary flooding.
“We'll be writing to all of the flood-affected people who we think have a claim,” he said.
“A lot of those people are already involved. But there's a lot who either have not been aware, or haven't decided what they want to do.”
He said he could not provide an exact figure for the number of properties IMF believed had suffered unnecessary flooding.
“We're currently in the process of using Google technology and maps ... to identify how many there are.
“But the state knows how many there are, and certain instrumentalities know how many there are.”
In March last year, Queensland's floods inquiry found Wivenhoe dam operator - the government-owned SEQwater - breached the dam's operating manual during devastating floods in Brisbane, Ipswich and surrounds in January 2011.
Commissioner Catherine Holmes found the dam was operated in breach of its manual from 8am on January 8 until the evening of January 9, before Brisbane and Ipswich flooded.
But she also noted the manual was “ambiguous, unclear and difficult to use, and was not based on the best, most current research and information”.
She found flooding in Brisbane and Ipswich could have been reduced to some degree, if capacity in the dam had been freed up before the December deluge that contributed to the floods.
Ms Holmes also found there was evidence three dam engineers had colluded to mislead the inquiry about how they managed the dam during the flood crisis.
But the corruption watchdog, the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC), later exonerated the engineers of misleading the inquiry.
The CMC agreed that the dam was operated in breach of its manual.
But it found ambiguities in the document explained the engineers' inconsistent statements and descriptions of what they did during the flood crisis.
However the CMC was only asked to look at documents the engineers prepared about their actions and their oral testimony to the inquiry.
It did not look at whether their management of the dam's gates during the flood crisis could amount to a criminal offence or official misconduct.
IMF Australia and Maurice Blackburn contend that too much water was allowed to accumulate in Wivenhoe, and the strategy for water releases during the crisis was botched.
Maurice Blackburn has previously said any class action against the Queensland government would probably seek compensation in excess of $1 billion.
www.TheAustralian.com.au
21.1.13
