Were we ready for the flood?

By ERWIN CHLANDA

“There is no blame to be placed here. There was very little warning, if any, that the river would peak at these levels.”

This statement to the ABC by Police Commissioner Martin Doyle about this morning’s Todd River flood in Alice Springs deserves examination, not in the least because a woman was in danger of death in the torrent, spending some nine hours clinging to a tree.

A spokesman for the Bureau of Metereology (BOM), in response to questions from the Alice Springs News, says: “Since last Thursday, 5 February, there has been widespread rainfall across Central Australia, which has gradually saturated catchments.

“The Bureau issued severe thunderstorm warnings at 9:22pm last night for slow moving thunderstorms that could produce heavy rainfall in the Alice Springs area.

“These were updated at 1:04am, 1:38am and 2:59am this morning as the heavy rainfall impacted the area. Warnings were finalised at 4:55am when rainfall had eased.”

BOM describes the Todd as a flash flood catchment, “river levels rose rapidly between 1am and 4am, with the Todd River at Anzac Oval peaking at 3:45am at 4:30am”.

This led to the flooding of some of the town, damaging homes, property and businesses.

This has been known for decades.

Despite a much bigger flood in 1988, political leaders have displayed astonishing incompetence dealing with an issue staring us in the face: Failure to build a dam upstream from the Telegraph Station; abysmally mishandling negotiations with traditional owners which brought the Federal Government on the scene with a 20 year moratorium; not examining the proposal for a road and rail tunnel parallel to The Gap that in rare times of flood would accommodate much of the water flowing south.

Police Southern Watch Commander Marc Watson spoke with the ABC this morning about the the woman in the river: “The last update I received is that she is clinging onto some trees in the middle of the river. The main concern is her fatigue levels. We believe that she was swept off the Taffy Pick bridge [causeway] just after three o’clock this morning.

ABC: That’s about five hours. Are you developing some kind of plan?

WATSON: We are. The police in conjunction with the Emergency Service team we are trying to come up with a bit of a strategy which may include using a boat but whether they can access her due to the current at the moment … I believe the current is quite strong, yeh, we are looking at some options, that’s for sure.

ABC: What happens if the current doesn’t subside? Choppering in?

WATSON: I am not aware of a chopper option. Our main priority at the moment is keeping our eyes on here until NTES can either access her via the water or some sort of roping mechanism. That’s certainly up to the NTES experts.

I reported my observations of an attempted helicopter rescue of a man in the Todd during the 1988 flood.

The chopper was flown by Connair pilot Christine Davy. A police officer lowered himself down a rope through the crowns of gumtrees and made contact with the man. But the effort failed when strong winds forced the flight to be aborted.

The police officer was injured. The flood victim died.

Today there was no wind, the approach was not obscured by trees and the flight time from the airport would have been about five minutes.

The choppers used by the police for searches costing tens of thousands of dollars remained on the ground as a woman's life was in the balance.