1 October 2024

On Saturday 28 September 2024 Resilient Kurilpa hosted Flood Planning Conversations at South Leagues Club. Catch up with the workshop learnings below.

The presentation commenced with an overview of Resilient Kurilpa’s Apartment Toolkit, with an emphasis on the Flood Mitigation Plan templates that are available for people to adapt and adopt for their own apartment buildings.

Three presenters offered insights into their experiences with flood planning.

Helen Ward, Flood Warden from Kangaroo Point

Helen Ward has 10 years experience as a flood warden. She shared a number of practical tips including:

They were able to use their CCTV in the basement to identify water entry with a time signature on the video. The BCC Flood Information Office provided the corresponding river height at City Gauge. Combined with measured garage floor height this allowed more accurate modification of future action plans. (Other buildings will need to use local indicators.)
Clean subfloor drains in carpark regularly. Protect drain inlets to prevent objects rolling in.
Paint unit numbers high on walls or columns in car park spaces.
They were unable to move the electrical switchboard, so have purchased and will store on site the spare equipment necessary to reinstate the power systems. This will facilitate rapid return of electric power and incidentally avoided the huge cost of relocation.
Annual training is essential for managers and Flood Wardens.
Can’t rely on a building manager; can’t rely on one or two people; the building community must be involved.
The flood management plan must be implementable on weekends and at night.
Resident contacts must be kept updated.
Most residents want to be able to make their own decisions about actions but need to be informed about how to do that. Information for residents needs to be simple and graphics are very useful. Unfortunately, few residents wish to attend update/training meetings.

Helen also shared sample Flood Preparation and Flood Alert notices for residents. Find these over on our Apartment Toolkit and modify for your building.

Lucas Gilroy, Director Development and Precinct from the Queensland Ballet

Lucas gave an overview of the legal requirements for building in a flood affected site. He advised that Queensland Ballet’s refurbishment was awarded a Platinum Sustainability classification due to the disaster resilience features and their Flood Management Plan.

From another facility development project located in Ipswich, Lucas advised the flood levels for the Bremer River are being reviewed and are likely to increase the minimal building height more than 1 metre. While this figure can not be extrapolated to downstream Brisbane River, it is worth noting the leeway for greater future flood level heights that his team are now preparing for.

Lynn Smith, Body Corporate Secretary from Skyneedle Apartments

Skyneedle Apartments used the Resilient Kurilpa Flood Mitigation Plan template for her building. It took 9 months of hard work. Lynn also advised their greatest difficulty was getting information about the building design and corresponding flood levels, as well as motivating other body corporate members to take an active interest. At first a Flood Mitigation Plan appears overwhelming, but her advice is just to start taking it step-by-step.

Shared learning

The main workshop activity was sharing of experience between the 36 attendees who represented 12 buildings from across West End, South Brisbane, Kangaroo Point, Toowong and more. Attendees were asked to summarise their discussions:

Communication issues

Residents must be kept informed. This is difficult. Maintaining contacts for all residents was difficult. Suggestions included having an electronic messaging system and access to on-site manager at all times.
Access to the fire alarm system to communicate with residents is possible with training and purchase of a standard key. This is the most efficient way of alerting residents.
BoM information may not be reliable.
Energex should and must give warning of power outages. Alerts could be made on ABC radio.
Need to clarify legal issues pertaining to unlocking personal storage cages and relocating goods to avoid water damage.
Psychological First Aid (PFA) is necessary, especially post incident recovery. (Residents can share information about providing PFA via Resilient Kurilpa’s online webinar.)
All distributed information must be modified to the needs of individual buildings.

Buildings

Protection of lifts include
- a) setting the default to ‘homing’ at level 2 or above in the building at all times,
- b) water trigger that ‘parks’ lift at high level and not useable,
- c) pumps start operating whenever it rains, but are not powerful enough to remove basement wide flooding.
- d) removal of equipment stored in the lift well.
Lifts still need to be locked and the lift well barricaded from water intrusion. Contacts of contractors shared and recorded in Flood Mitigation Plans.
Individual unit keys should include fire doors at ground and resident’s building level.
Need for more information on ‘how to manage lifts’.
Energex’s Community Liaison Officer will provide important information regarding the location of substations and the distribution network to which specific buildings pertain, but will not discuss need for warning of power cuts.
The scale of the building influences the Flood Mitigation Plan, resources for preparing plan, and actions needed.

Conclusions, common barriers and concerns

The take home common issues from the conservations were:

Energex practices of cutting power without warning needs to stop. Warnings of 10 to 30 minutes would prevent lifts being ‘caught’ at ground level and people being ‘caught’ in a lift.
Flood Wardens need access to the Fire Panel to contact residents in the complex especially at night or weekends when phones may be switched off or not monitored.
Residents need access to building plans — as constructed building plans — is problematic. This needs advocacy with Brisbane City Council.

Resilient Kurilpa wants to acknowledge the hard work and participation of residents from the following apartment buildings represented on the day:

Left Bank (66 units)
Gardens (238 units)
Riverpoint (330 units)
Waters Edge (348)
Tempo (90+ units)
Breeze (110 units)
South Edge (45 units)
Sky Needle (231 units)
Boardwalk (21 units)
Moreton View Towers (100+ units)
North Shore (37 units)
100 Macquarie Street (15 units)

Recapping the Flood Planning Conversations Workshop