When Liz Brodie received a warning that her home in Brisbane's south-west might flood, it was already under water.
The Oxley mum of three said she received the alert at 7:51pm on Sunday night after three days of rain and "at that point in time our house was already half inundated with water".
"We'd lost a lot of our possessions already."
"It was quite ridiculous."
"We just found it ludicrous that we had not had any contact from anyone at that point in regard to what we should do, how we should go about things, if we should evacuate or not,.
"It was far too little and far too late."
Her family was one of thousands across south-east Queensland affected by the floods in February who did not receive warnings in time, according to the new independent review into the disaster.
It found that found emergency alerts – about south-east Queensland flood disaster in February — were delayed in some local council areas, including Brisbane.
Report recommends enhancing training
The review was undertaken by the Inspector-General Emergency Management (IGEM) Alistair Dawson and looked at Queensland's emergency management response to the flood event in February and March.
The flooding left 3,600 homes uninhabitable and damaged nearly 7,000 homes.
The report found Wivenhoe Dam was managed properly, particularly around the timing of water releases, during the catastrophic floods that impacted 23 local government areas.
Mr Dawson said eight of the 19 recommendations related to improving the emergency alert system.
"They are quiet straight forward," he said.
"They are around enhancing training and how we get the system to work better for us.
"There are valuable learnings from this report."
At a press conference after handing down the report in Parliament, Emergency Services Minister Mark Ryan singled out the Brisbane City Council for not requesting an emergency alert be sent until Sunday night.
A table in the report shows the first local council to send emergency alerts was Gympie with "emergency level" warnings issued on early Wednesday morning.
Brisbane City Council was one of the last to issue emergency alerts to residents impacted by the Brisbane River – the first was sent at 7:51pm on Sunday night at an "advice level".
"There's a very important timeline that has been put out in the report which shows where all the alerts were issued and requested," he said.
"Notwithstanding the severe rain starting Thursday and Friday, and notwithstanding that many councils issued emergency alerts on the Friday and Saturday.
"Brisbane City Council did not request that first alert until Sunday night, and it had been raining for a number of days."
The Emergency Alert system is the national telephone emergency warning system and was introduced in 2010 following the Black Saturday Victorian bushfires in 2009.
The emergency alerts – which are targeted warning messages sent to landlines or mobiles — complement other warning methods like disaster dashboards, social media, local TV, radio, opt-in warning systems, sirens and door knocking.
The report found 94 emergency alerts were sent during the flood event with Mr Dawson noting: "Some were issued in a timely manner, and others were received by people after homes were inundated by floodwaters."
Mr Dawson said flooding was being experienced at various locations across Brisbane on Saturday, February 26 and on Sunday, February 27.
The report said the Brisbane Local Disaster Management Group requested an advice-level emergency alert – the lowest priority — be issued on the Sunday night at 7:07pm.
Mr Dawson noted there was a 37-minute delay as the Brisbane LDMG and the authorising officer at the State Disaster Coordination Centre (SDCC) agreed on the wording of the message with the issuing of the alert then commencing at 7:51pm on Sunday night.
Due to a number of other factors – like the system sending the alerts at intervals and requests from other local council to send alerts at a higher level getting prioritised – it took more than 12 hours for the Brisbane alerts to be issued completely.
Brisbane City Council 'using our own' alert system
Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said council sent out emergency warnings via its own opt-in alert system and on various social media channels.
"We released information as quickly as we could," he said.
"We started sending out our own alerts on the Thursday, right at the beginning of this weather system.
"Brisbane City Council was using our system to send out alerts and we sent out millions of text messages on our system.
"When it comes to the emergency alert system, if there's any kind of suggestion we should have sent out more messages on a system that was clearly not working, and broken and delayed then I would question that advice."
Mr Schrinner said the national alert system was experiencing long delays with pushing out messages.
"The reality is putting more messages out on a system that was delayed and overloaded would not be a good outcome," he said.
"We were already seeing delays of up to 14 hours from the emergency alert system."
Mr Ryan earlier told Parliament the report was critical of some local government staff and their knowledge of the alert system.
"The review pointed to a lack of training and awareness with some local government staff, who the Inspector-General Emergency Management found were not aware of processes of the emergency alert system," he said.
"This resulted in delays with emergency alert requests and contributed to a delay in residents receiving alerts.
"However it should be said there are a substantial number of local governments that have mature government in place and who are already well versed in system requirements relating to emergency alerts."
Alert training under scrutiny
Mr Ryan again singled out the Brisbane City Council as not having completed training on how the national emergency alert system works for a number of years.
"I don't want to pick on anyone in particular but there is one of the councils who have been offered training for a couple of years but haven't chosen to take that training up," he said.
"For instance, the Brisbane City Council last accessed the emergency alert training module, known as module 2, in 2018.
"I am very pleased they have now signed up to access that training and they're due to have that training on the 24th of October.
"Is it important for local government to access that training to connect with QFES, to make sure they have the aware around how the national emergency alert system works, particularly when it comes to timings, targeting and messaging."
Mr Ryan said the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) had also already reached out to the national administrator of the national alert system to improve the capacity of the system for the future.
Mr Schrinner said while council had agreed to undertake more training of the alert system by November this year, he believed the alert system was broken.
"No amount of training on a system which is overloaded and broken would have changed the outcome," he said.
"Training to use a flawed system that failed residents is not going to solve the issue."
Alert delays in some local government areas
The minister said QFES will implement the report's 19 recommendations by November.
It includes strengthening the flood warning network, providing additional support and training for local government users of the emergency alert system and increasing subscription of the local government opt-in services.
Mr Dawson also recommended QFES lead an urgent multi-agency review of the workflow of the current emergency alert system, including requesting, composing, authorising and issuing alerts and that an "urgent approval and distribution without delay" process for alert messages be included.
Mr Ryan told Parliament the report found there were opportunities to improve the timing of high priority messages to ensure they were sent with urgency.
"The report also reflects on examples of delays in emergency alerts being issues in some local government areas," he said.
"This was due to a number of factors including national system constraints and delays in processing requests from local government agencies due to messaging and targeting inaccuracies."
Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) figures show the damage bill from the flood disaster in Queensland and New South Wales has reached $5.45 billion from around 234,000 claims.
