From floods to bushfires: trauma lingers long after the tragedy
Warning: this article contains material that may cause distress or trigger traumatic memories for some people.
Summer is the season that emergency authorities fear; January most of all. Temperatures are high; strong winds – including cyclones – blow a gale through much of the country; and many of Australia’s natural disasters occur in this first month of the year.
This summer is the first anniversary of the widest-spread bushfires in Australia’s recorded history, in which 33 people were killed, nearly 20 million hectares were burnt and 6000 buildings were destroyed.
This month is also the 10th anniversary of the 2011 Queensland floods, which resulted in $2.4 billion damage and, officially, 33 people died. The bodies of another three have never been located.
Go back a little further in time to see just how eventful January is in weather terms. Brisbane’s previous 'once in a century' flood in 1974 was in January, while the other major flood in modern times was just outside the month, in early February 1893. In January 1918, Mackay was hit by a huge cyclone in which 30 people died.
In January, if you turn your back on nature, you could find yourself at its mercy. Much like the town of Grantham, in the Lockyer Valley, in 2011.
By January that year, there had been rain over much of Australia’s east coast for several months through an extended La Niña and the ground was inundated. This meant that when heavy rain fell, the ground could not absorb any water.
So, when Toowoomba and the areas around it received heavy rain on January 10 – including 600mms in an hour – water quickly ran off the high hills near the city, forming instant, quick-running watercourses and leading to massive flooding in the Lockyer Valley.
Click on the image to view photos of UQ's St Lucia and Gatton campuses during the 2011 floods.
Grantham was established because it was where two watercourses run together, although generally in modern Queensland, these watercourses are dry.
But it was a different dynamic in the floods, where suddenly having two creeks run together with a huge rainfall meant it flooded very quickly and menacingly. Locals used the terms ‘inland tsunami’ and ‘wall of water’.
Of Grantham’s 300 people, 12 were killed in the floods, as floodwaters rose from slight to deadly within an hour. Virtually everyone in the town knew at least one person who died. The tragedy was compounded by its sheer unlikeliness – Grantham is 150 kilometres from the sea, and if you visit it today, it’s almost impossible to imagine it flooding.
Click on the image to view photos of UQ's St Lucia and Gatton campuses during the 2011 floods.
Click on the image to view photos of UQ's St Lucia and Gatton campuses during the 2011 floods.
I covered the 2011 floods as a journalist for The Australian, but not specifically Grantham. In subsequent years, I also covered the flood anniversaries.
The first year after the flood was a media and political extravaganza – Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and other political luminaries at the time all travelled to the town to pay their respects. The townspeople all dutifully lined up to hear the speeches and express their condolences.
Grantham residents pay tribute to flood victims during a dawn service on January 10, 2012. Image: Chris Hyde/Getty Images
Grantham residents pay tribute to flood victims during a dawn service on January 10, 2012. Image: Chris Hyde/Getty Images
But it was a different story the second year, when a quiet community gathered in the local park to remember the occasion by themselves. Of the people I spoke to two years on, there were a variety of responses – from those who had shrugged their shoulders and moved on with life, to those who had not even remotely come to terms with the tragedy and whose lives were permanently damaged.
Many were in the middle category, seemingly getting on with life, but sometimes having sleepless nights as the trauma of the flooding kept replaying in their minds.
Associate Professor Vanessa Cobham, of UQ’s School of Psychology, specialises in mental health of children and adolescents, and was part of a team that went to Grantham after the floods.
She said the team deployed a ‘stepped care’ model, in which all disaster-impacted families were offered the level of support that matched their mental-health needs. Dr Cobham explained that the majority of children and adolescents do not tend to experience ongoing mental health problems post-disaster, but rather make a good emotional recovery with the passage of time and the support of their family and community.
Under these circumstances, a ‘stepped care’ model was the most appropriate for clinical service.
Talking about the ‘screen and treat’ element of the model, Dr Cobham said it was important to achieve a balance so that they didn’t miss anyone, while being conscious not to pathologise normal reactions to an abnormal event.
“Post-disaster, many people are unlikely to present for mental health issues – the main person they tend to seek out is their GP,” Dr Cobham said.
“Having said that, parents in the Lockyer Valley were really receptive to the opportunity to have their children participate in the ‘screen and treat’ program.”
The first step in the response was a universal mass information campaign. This involved a series of community engagement nights, which outlined what services were available and what signs to look out for among their families and friends.
The next step was to support the school teachers in the area, who were often on the frontline when dealing with trauma among their pupils.
“We weren’t going to turn them into counsellors, but it was largely telling them what to look out for among their pupils,” she said.
Associate Professor Vanessa Cobham.
Associate Professor Vanessa Cobham.
They also held smaller seminars for parents, which focussed on how to look for danger signs in their children – such as becoming more aggressive, clinging or fearful – and where to go for relevant help.
Then there was the next level, where children required clinical intervention for enduring post-traumatic stress symptoms.
“We knew from experience in other natural disasters around Australia that about 12 per cent of children fall into this category. In Grantham – due to the nature and consequences of the event – the figure was, unsurprisingly, much higher than this,” she said.
“Even so, we had a relatively small number of interventions compared to the number of children and adolescents screened. The community had very strong support networks.
“On the whole, the community appreciated the support they were getting. One of the best aspects was that of the children who needed intervention, 95 per cent no longer met that criteria at the end of the intervention, because the treatment gains were maintained 12 months later.
“They were very receptive and open to what we were offering. It was a real privilege to work with that community.”
Trauma counselling specialist Emeritus Professor Justin Kenardy, of UQ’s School of Psychology, was also involved in addressing the needs of the Grantham community after the floods. He said there are at least four different ways that people respond to traumatic events.
The first is resilience, the standard response, in which people have a short-term trauma but come to terms with it quickly.
“There are all sorts of factors influencing this, such as the level of exposure to the event, but also the support system in place, and a person’s upbringing,” he said.
The second is when individuals have a very strong response to the traumatic event, and the trauma extends for some time, but eventually they come to terms with themselves and what happened to them.
The third is when the trauma is never resolved, and the strong initial reaction felt in all categories never goes away. These are people for whom the tragedy is a completely defining event, and their lives will never be the same after it. Some Vietnam veterans come into this category. Ongoing issues related to the event can become traumatic themselves, such as insurance claims.
Volunteers walk past a home being cleaned after the floods in 2011. Image: Jonathan Wood/Getty Images
Volunteers walk past a home being cleaned after the floods in 2011. Image: Jonathan Wood/Getty Images
Some of the people who were flooded a decade ago in places such as Ipswich are still waiting to receive any financial assistance from the class action taken against the operators of the Wivenhoe Dam, and this ongoing situation reminds them of the initial flooding.
The fourth is a delayed shock, when an individual appears to be coping with their situation, but something happens to pull a trigger. It could be if an insurance claim is refused or marital trouble, “and their capacity for coping just cracks”.
“For some people, a very small incident that is a reminder of the original event can set them off – news of an unusually high tide or other weather warnings, for example, may remind them of a flood."
"Anniversaries of events, such as this year, can also be a trigger."
Professor Kenardy said there was no accurate way of predicting outcomes of trauma; however, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress could last for a long time after an event.
“Some people adopt the strategy of avoidance – for example, when there’s something on television about floods, bushfires or storms, they instantly turn off the television or leave the room. They will prefer to have no discussion at all with anyone over what happened to them.
“Sometimes that avoidance will prolong the trauma. They will continue to avoid reminders because they see it as something to fear.
“But in dealing with that trauma, there is no shame – in fact, there is great strength – in reaching out for support when you need it. If you feel as though you need help, there is a simple strategy – get it. Plenty of places can offer such support."
While the natural disasters themselves can affect the mental health of individuals in a community, the disaster can often affect the community itself.
In the case of Grantham, many small businesses in the town closed down, and there was major social dislocation after the floods, as people had to leave their community because their houses had been destroyed.
Emeritus Professor Justin Kenardy and Associate Professor Nicholas Osborne.
Emeritus Professor Justin Kenardy and Associate Professor Nicholas Osborne.
Associate Professor Nicholas Osborne, of UQ’s School of Public Health, has taught courses on the health implications of public disasters. He said there were often long-term impacts on a community after a natural disaster.
“Social networks, in small towns in particular, can change very quickly after a disaster,” he said.
“Sometimes people may have survived a disaster relatively intact, but they find their social networks have changed a lot. This happened with some of those small towns in the Lockyer Valley, and people had to move away."
“You can see it in what happened after the bushfires as well. We still have stories of people living in shipping containers and the like. People aren’t supposed to live in caravans for long periods.
“There is often a sort of community trauma which can impact an individual – maybe their insurance claim is getting mucked around, or there’s a shortage of builders.
“The other instance is where people have to move to new areas because their houses have been destroyed. Sometimes they bring with them some anxiety and depression, and they have more trouble coping as they don’t have the community support systems in an area they’ve never lived before.”
As communities across South East Queensland paused to reflect on the 10th anniversary of the 2011 floods, they did so while also coming to terms with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Professor Kenardy said the threat of COVID-19 could have a heightened impact on people who have already had a trauma in their lives, whether from a natural disaster or something else.
“The trauma may undermine a person’s sense of predictability, that they know what’s going to happen in their life," he said.
"The big flood or bushfire wasn’t predicted. Likewise, the coronavirus wasn’t predicted and, at first, we weren't sure how to respond to it. If people already have that heightened sense of a lack of predictability, then something like COVID-19 could reinforce that.
“If a community is disrupted through a natural disaster, then it’s very hard for that community to maintain a continuity of support for people. And the long-term mental health effects of COVID-19 – not just people who’ve contracted it, but people who have been locked down for months – are still uncertain.”
So, we can learn two lessons from major disasters.
First, if people are prepared they should be OK. Cyclone Yasi, only two months after the Brisbane floods, was one of the biggest cyclones ever to hit Australia. Yet, because people prepared for it, the damage was limited. Grantham was obviously the other extreme – no one at all saw it coming; no residents, no authorities, no forecasters.
Second, community support is vital. The silver lining on the very dark cloud of the 2011 floods was the way it brought people together to first survive the floods and then to clean up afterwards.
Communities that stick together recover better.
If you are living with trauma, or you have been affected by the topics covered in this article, find help and resources via:
- Black Dog Institute
- Lifeline on 13 11 14
- Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800
- MensLine Australia on 1300 789 978
- Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467
- Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636
- Headspace on 1800 650 890
Common symptoms associated with traumatic stress
- Repeated nightmares or constantly disturbed sleep about the events..
- Thinking a lot about the event when you don’t want to
- Attempting to avoid thinking about the event or any situations that remind you of the event.
- Being constantly on edge and watchful for possible danger.
- Feeling guilty and not being able to stop blaming yourself for the event.
Common symptoms of depression and anxiety
- Feeling down, depressed or hopeless.
- Losing interest or pleasure in doing things.
- Feelings of being nervous or on edge.
- Not being able to stop worrying.
If someone experiences distressing signs and symptoms that persist over more than a few weeks to a month, and especially if these create a significant interference with day-to-day activities and functions, it might be worth discussing with a GP.
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