Queensland Premier David Crisafulli gave an update on the ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred earlier this morning.
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00:00Our message this morning to Queenslanders is firstly one of gratitude and secondly is
00:08one to continue to watch because there are still significant challenges ahead for this
00:12event and we'll outline what they are in a moment.
00:17Those four key challenges, waves, wind, rainfall and flooding, have been those four stages
00:23that different areas have worked through at different times.
00:26I want to start with wind.
00:28Overnight, we recorded some wind speeds including 107km at the Gold Coast Seaway, 93km per hour
00:36at the Brisbane Airport and 85km per hour at Redcliffe.
00:41We have seen some damage to some buildings.
00:43We've seen the loss of a roof of one of the apartment buildings, one of the older buildings
00:48on the Gold Coast.
00:49We've had quite a few instances of trees falling on homes, cars and power lines.
00:55To waves, this is where the good news of this story is.
01:00As the system didn't cross the coast on high tide, those prospects of storm tide inundation,
01:09Queenslanders were spared from that.
01:11To have no homes reported still right now that have had storm tide inundation is really
01:18a tremendous, tremendous result.
01:21We have seen some extreme erosion because of it on the beaches and there'll be some
01:26considerable damage there and we've spoken about what that looks like to some of the
01:30key infrastructure on the beaches, particularly on the Gold Coast.
01:34But the fact that we have avoided the storm tide surge is a great story in all of this.
01:41The big challenge in the next few days is rainfall.
01:44In the past 19 hours, we've had 240 mm recorded at Springbrook, 200 mm at Tullabudgera and
01:52100 mm at Mount Cotton.
01:54The challenge is now, flash flooding, creek rises, they remain a real prospect with some
02:00of the rainfall predicted in the days ahead.
02:04We have to be ready for that prospect and with already swollen catchments, the risk
02:08of flash flooding remains.
02:11I want to turn to power outages because I know this is something that people are certainly
02:16focused on.
02:18We're currently approaching a quarter of a million homes without power.
02:23That's the single biggest loss we have seen in over a decade since Oswald.
02:29The work needed to reconnect that is significant but the ability and the desire of the men
02:36and women who will do it is with our peer.
02:40Operators need to know that right now, there are damage assessments being done and already
02:45crews are being mobilised to get that job done.