Never let it be said that managers will be able to make the right decisions in the middle of a crisis.

A panel of hydrologists and engineers from Worley Parsons WRM Water and Environment and Water Matters International in a report for the Insurance Council of Australia has formally categorised the Brisbane flood as a “dam release flood” rather than a flood caused by excessive rainfall.

They state in detailed reports before the Floods Commission of Inquiry that there would have been only minor flooding if the higher rate of release proposed by SEQWater on January 9 had been adopted.

High-level communications from Brisbane City Council to SEQWater on the evening of January 9th influenced the operators of Wivenhoe Dam to make lower releases of water at a critical time during heavy rainfall causing the dam to rise quickly to alarming levels and force the release of huge volumes which produced most of the devastating floods in January. SEQWater and the Queensland Government did not want to put the Brisbane City Council “offside again” after a controversy last October triggered by a Wivenhoe Dam release that prompted Lord Mayor Campbell-Newman to warn residents to start sandbagging low-lying homes.

Senior engineers have modelled the releases and shown they comprised most of the flood in the Brisbane River and also caused the Bremer River through Ipswich and the Lockyer Creek to back up adding metres to flood heights.

Michael O’Brien engineer has methodically and painstakingly focused on the facts numbers charts mathematical calculations operating procedures and ratings curves. He has no doubt that the official version of events – That Wivenhoe Dam has ‘done its job’ and prevented a much worse flood from engulfing Brisbane – is wrong and should not become accepted in public perception as fact.

O’Brien has produced a report: [url=http://resources.news.com.au/files/2011/03/18/1226024/175119-aus-news-file-brisbane-flooding-report.]Brisbane Flooding January 2011: An Avoidable Disaster[/url] and presented it to the Inquiry. His analysis and conclusions make sobering reading.

Even SEQWater concedes in a carefully qualified part of its 1180-page report that the massive releases of water from Wivenhoe Dam on Tuesday January 11 did indeed produce most of the flooding in the Brisbane River the following afternoon.