Judge finds in favour of 6,800 residents who sued over management of Wivenhoe and Somerset dams

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

Almost 7,000 Queenslanders have won a class action over the state’s devastating 2011 floods, with a judge finding they were victims of negligence.

New South Wales supreme court Justice Robert Beech-Jones found in favour of 6,800 claimants who sued the Queensland government, Seqwater and Sunwater over the scale of the disaster.

Beech-Jones accepted that engineers whose job was to manage Wivenhoe and Somerset dams before and during a “biblical” deluge in January 2011 had failed in their duty of care.

About 23,000 homes and businesses went under in Brisbane and Ipswich when authorities released huge amounts of water to protect the dams’ structural integrity.

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There were tears from some victims as the ruling was delivered.

Goodna retiree Frank Beaumont, 77, was emotional as he celebrated the victory and mulled over the years of distress he suffered after his home went under.

“The mental stress has been horrendous,” Beaumont said from Ipswich.

“We’ve had so many trodden-down moments where the insurance didn’t pay, being kicked out of a rental home and then having to rebuild an absolutely devastated house.”

Beech-Jones agreed with victims’ claims that engineers negligently managed the dams and that they did not factor in extraordinary rainfall forecasts in deciding how best to respond to the flood.

That was despite them being obliged to do so according to the dam manual.

He found that during days of heavy rain, before the peak of the flood on 11 January, dam engineers prioritised keeping downstream bridges open over trying to limit flooding in urban areas.

The engineers had “failed to follow the very manual they drafted 18 months earlier”.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn brought the class action and said victims had finally been vindicated after long claiming the operation of the dams grossly exacerbated the scale of the flooding.

Outside the court, principal lawyer Rebecca Gilsenan said the focus must now be on securing timely compensation, and on making sure Queenslanders were never again at the mercy of mismanaged dams meant to mitigate flooding.

No cost decision was made. The case will return to court in February.

The ruling was years in the making and was heard in NSW because at the time it was lodged class actions were not possible in Queensland.