By Dominique Tassell
Flooding concerns were again a topic of discussion at the 28 September Ordinary Council Meeting.
Cr Ross Bartley said he’d raised with chief executive Dave Burges the night prior to the meeting that a crossing on the back road to Allora had flooded.
He said the crossing, where Campbell’s Gully meets the Condamine River on Rosehill Road in Warwick, often flooded.
Cr Bartley said he knew the road wasn’t council’s responsibility, as it was handled by Main Roads, but a resident had to “take it into his own hands“ and tow people out.
He said this was an example of why the council needed to leave signage in the hands of responsible people.
Killarney locals are also concerned about weather predictions for the next few months, Cr Bartley said, and he suggested given the town was cut off completely when it flooded that they have access to a pile of sand in a strategic place with sandbags available.
He asked that they find someone or someplace to store them in town, putting up Lions as an option.
“I think we’re in for big trouble this year,“ he said.
Cr Bartley also highlighted that other communities, like Leyburn and Pratten, should possibly be considered too given their potential to be cut off during flooding.
Mr Burges responded to these concerns, saying that council had made arrangements in Killarney given the forecast.
He said there was now sand and sandbags at the depot.
Cr Jo McNally said that given the forecast, council should be presented with an agenda item dealing with this.
At the 14 September Ordinary Council Meeting, similar concerns were raised.
Cr McNally raised concerns about the council’s preparedness for flooding and asked whether the council was at risk of running out of “road closed“ signs given the amount of water around the region and if they needed to address this.
Staff stated they would take this on notice, but from time to time they were running on short supply.
“Obviously we want to carry enough but not too many.“
Cr Bartley said that in some situations, staff could not get to areas to put up road closure signs and asked whether they could look into getting locals to help out in those situations.
Cr Sheryl Windle supported this, saying that in areas such as Leyburn locals knew when it was likely to flood and having locals helping out could “eliminate maybe a catastrophe in future“.
Cr Bartley said there had also been instances where vehicles like trucks have had to reverse out of areas for up to a kilometre as signs were placed too far down a road that they could not turn out of.
