Australia — Update to Defence support to Queensland flood disaster

The Min­is­ter for Defence Sci­ence and Per­son­nel, War­ren Snow­don, in his capac­i­ty as Act­ing Min­is­ter for Defence, today vis­it­ed the new­ly estab­lished Head­quar­ters Joint Task Force 637 (JTF637) which is con­duct­ing Oper­a­tion Queens­land Flood Assist. Mr Snow­don vis­it­ed the Bris­bane-based Head­quar­ters where he received brief­in­gs from the ADF Com­man­der, Colonel Luke Fos­ter, and his team on the scope of sup­port which the ADF is pro­vid­ing to the Queens­land Gov­ern­ment-led flood res­cue and relief efforts. 

“The scale of dev­as­ta­tion expe­ri­enced by the peo­ple of cen­tral Queens­land as a result of these floods sad­dens me,” Mr Snow­don said, “but in times of crises Aus­tralians are renowned for pulling togeth­er to help each oth­er out and I note that this cri­sis is no exception. 

“I am heart­ened by the way in which the numer­ous organ­i­sa­tions and agen­cies have pulled togeth­er to res­cue and assist those who are suf­fer­ing at this time.” 

Defence will con­tin­ue to oper­ate close­ly with Queens­land Emer­gency Ser­vices to pro­vide sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise, plan­ning and coor­di­na­tion of the ADF sup­port to the civ­il led flood response. 

The ADF has already pro­vid­ed sup­port to State and Fed­er­al emer­gency man­age­ment agen­cies by assist­ing with the evac­u­a­tion of peo­ple from the towns of Theodore, Emer­ald and Con­damine, as well as pro­vid­ing emer­gency food drops and med­ical sup­plies to Queens­land peo­ple iso­lat­ed by the flood waters. 

The ADF will con­tin­ue to review the sit­u­a­tion in coor­di­na­tion with Emer­gency Man­age­ment Queens­land and pro­vide a com­men­su­rate lev­el of sup­port with­in avail­able resources. 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

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