My house was directly impacted so I am perhaps a little more jaundiced in my view than others. But I cannot help wondering why it would take "large balls" to make a management decision to release water on a flatter curve for longer rather than leave it to the last minute and have to take such drastic (and damaging) measures. Risk management is central to the answer. We now know what the risk of waiting looks like, we also have (is it?) 2 functional but mothballed Desal plants waiting for the next drought. I hope next time we have a more measured risk management assessment to rely on.

Well, very interesting.

If this is correct, & it is now the second source of similar information, the insurance industry is off the hook.

If these blokes did take the weekend off, in a growing emergency, they, & us as tax payers, should be for the high jump.

If we, through our state government & our bureaucrats, caused this flood, it should be at our cost that all damage is repaired.

I wonder how much of the Ipswich flood, from the Bremer R was caused by back up from the Brisbane R.

We could be paying for this for a long time.

It does appear to be a continuing story. Every time there is a major disaster it is made worse by our bureaucrats, rather than managed. The Victorian, & Canberra fires come to mind.

The buck goes to George Street, & the politicians, but continues to us, & we must be prepared to pick up the cost.

Dam operators will never in a million years get the procedure right, They will be bagged for wasting water, or they will be bagged for causing a flood.
The release of water should have been three days before it started raining. It is a no win situation.
The rain area was far to big for concentrated mitigation.

I have some sympathy with that problem 570.

A friend of mine used to tell me that to promote improved pasture, you should get every thing ready, then broadcast the seed a couple of days before rain. He never did tell me when that was.

However, if they did allow the dams flood compartment to fill to a considerable extent over the weekend, with heavy rain forecast, because those responsible for ordering greater releases were off for the weekend, there is absolutely no excuse.

If, as with climate gate, & Queensland health, this inquiry is designed to be a whitewash, there may be another flood, this one of indignation.

You had me going there for a minute, Hasbeen:

"If these blokes did take the weekend off,
in a growing emergency, they, & us as tax
payers, should be for the high jump. "

Shocked as I was to learn that more than 80% of the water in the Brisbane River at its peak on Wednesday resulted from a 645,000 megalitre release from Wivenhoe on the Tuesday, I didn't think I could have missed anything about the operators 'taking the weekend off'. I re-read the article. It stated, in the second paragraph of a quote of Andrew Dragun, an adjunct professor in economics at the Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University and editor of the International Journal of Water:

"As the low system dumped rain, the operator
opened the gates, releasing about 116,000
megalitres on Friday-Saturday, with releases
of 100,000ML over the next two days. Despite
these releases the dam level rose to 148 per cent
by Monday last week."

There is thus not the slightest suggestion of those responsible for operating the dam 'taking the weekend off in a growing emergency'. Professor Dragun expressly contradicts this possibility with his reporting of the 116,000 megalitre release on Friday-Saturday, and the 100,000 megalitre release over the Sunday and Monday, thus showing the operators as having been right on the job before, during, and after the weekend. Nowhere in the article can I see any suggestion as to there having been a requirement upon the dam operators to seek any 'higher authorization' for greater releases on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday than the ones that were made. There may have been such requirement, but one would need a reference before being able to claim so.

The main thrust of the article is that the operators certainly operated 'by the book', but that the decision-making climate in which 'the book' was written failed to take into account well known effects of the El Nino Southern Oscillation on rainfall in Australia generally, and SEQ in particular, in a manner described as being one of wilful ignorance.

Hi Roger and fellow commentators,

Like Rogers psych analysis a lot.

Would be interested in your further analysis in the setting that the dam is back to 100%, and lots more rain/cyclones possible flooding ahead. What pressures on operators now? ... they have "hindsight" and everyone is watching.

The problem is not over by a long shot.

Best
Andrew Dragun