Mackay’s mayor has slammed the Bureau of Meteorology over wrong readings which led to a flood alert.
Greg Williamson says the Bureau issued major flood warnings at Mirani on Sunday – the council though had their own gauges which said otherwise.
“We’ve got 35 gauges in our Sandy Creek and Pioneer River system that are automatic gauges, they are they are already reading everything, we don’t have to go down and physically read them,” Mr Williamson told News Corp.
“We know what the rivers are doing, it’s not going to be a major flood level at Mirani at any stage and so that’s what we’re fighting against here – we’re fighting against a lack of investment in the technology,” the mayor said.
Premier David Crisafulli blasted the Bureau saying the technology failures would not be tolerated if they affected people in Sydney or Melbourne.
“There has not been the adequate investment in radar and rain gauges for a long time now. You can’t have communities that don’t have adequate rain gauges and you can’t have big portions of the state that isn’t covered by radar,” the Premier said.
