2010-2011 floods and cyclone

The natural disasters that struck north-east Australia between November 2010 and February 2011 caused widespread environmental damage.

The impacts of both the flooding events that devastated central and south-east Queensland, and the destruction wreaked by Tropical Cyclone Yasi, saw more than 99 per cent of Queensland declared as disaster affected.

The disaster caused significant damage to the state’s environment and natural resources including: marine protected areas; threatened native wildlife; national parks; riparian, coastal and mangrove ecosystems; productive landscapes; water and sewerage infrastructure; mining and coal seam gas operations, and more.

Initial response

The Department of Environment and Resource Management’s (DERM) planning and response to the disasters covered the breadth of its operations. Staff were involved in a range of areas including water quality and streamflow monitoring, assessment and monitoring of marine impacts, waste management, damage assessments, infrastructure repair, wildlife recovery, dam safety, heritage assessment and mapping and spatial information services.

For example, DERM’s Queensland Centre of Climate Change provided valuable advice on potential storm surge levels and locations, which underpinned many of the state’s disaster management decisions.

The department’s spatial information experts on the other hand provided vital aerial imagery and mapping support to organisations involved in the response.

Hundreds of departmental staff were also actively involved in disaster response, working in frontline roles including auxiliary fire fighter roles and emergency response roles including evacuation centre and relief accommodation planning.

Recovery and reconstruction

The Queensland Reconstruction Authority was established in January 2011 by the State Government to lead the statewide rebuilding program, and the department was tasked with coordinating Queensland's environmental recovery.

The department’s environmental recovery activities formed part of the Authority’s statewide community, economic and environmental recovery and reconstruction plan, called Operation Queenslander .

The department’s focus has been to conserve, protect and maintain Queensland's disaster–affected natural resources in the long-term.

Working with partners, in 2011, DERM:

• re-opened all of the 162 national parks that were significantly damaged by the disasters
• provided food to cassowaries and mahogany gliders in north Queensland after the cyclone damaged local forests. This included over 130,000 kilograms of fruit to cassowaries alone
• worked with regional natural resource management bodies and councils throughout the state on debris removal, fencing and restoration, and revegetation of watercourses on rural properties and in regions
• is delivering a marine stranding response to support turtles and dugongs whose food staple, seagrass, was depleted by the floods
• removed more than 2200 industrial containers, holding potentially hazardous materials, that washed up around Brisbane’s Oxley Creek from the floods
• recovered and recycled 250-300 tonnes of washed up plastic ‘trickle’ tape used in irrigation systems on farms in south west Queensland
• issued Transitional Environmental Programs to coal seam gas and mining companies affected by flooding or inundation
• supported the recovery of councils’ more than 100 water supply and 80 sewerage schemes
• provided a range of important spatial information and mapping services to agencies involved in disaster recovery
• conducted the largest coordinated marine monitoring effort in the state’s history along the coast to gauge the impact of flood plumes
• conducted an escalated program of pollution and health monitoring in affected waterways, reef health and marine ecosystems.

Read more about these activities.

Last updated 13 January 2012

Environmental disaster recovery

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