Grassroots
resilience
Dissatisfied with the authorities, one flood victim is leading a community fight against further inundation
By Harris Pozderovic
In the days leading up to October 14 2022, people in Melbourne’s inner-western suburbs believed they were prepared for forecast torrential rain.
Communities such as Maribyrnong, Kensington and Avondale Heights were anticipating some flooding – predicted levels for the Maribyrnong River ranged between 2.4 and 3.4 metres – but they were reassured by the State Emergency Service’s “reasonable confidence” the water would “remain in levees”.
In the early morning of October 14, they realised the predictions were wrong, as many woke up to emergency evacuation warnings. Within two hours of those warnings, floodwater began to hit homes as the river reached 4.2 metres, the highest level in 50 years.
Madeleine Serle’s home was one of more than 600 hit when the river broke its banks. She recalls the flood overwhelming her neighbourhood – a boat that had been docked nearby was left floating in her street – and water wrecking the ground floor of her property.
Maribyrnong Community Recovery Association founder Madeleine Serle in her flood-damaged home in inner-west Melbourne.
More than two years on from the floods, Ms Serle is still confined to her property’s first floor. The bottom floor remains stripped out and she is unsure when repairs will be completed.
In the meantime, she is spearheading a people-powered bid to ensure the riverside suburbs are better protected from future floods – including forming a team of experts to carry out community-led mitigation work, and pushing for the creation of a “gold standard” in resilient property design.
Ms Serle was founding chair of the local council’s Community Recovery Committee, but she left after a few months amid disagreements over recovery co-ordination and the council’s handling of residents trying to manage the aftermath.
“I stepped out … and took two people on the committee and said we needed to have an independent group, so we didn’t have to protect the council,” Ms Serle tells Insurance News. “We could challenge them on what they were doing … and so I formed Maribyrnong Community Recovery Association.”
She has since recruited more than 700 members to the group, including hydrologists, engineers and lawyers, operating from her home and a small office provided by real estate group GPT’s general manager Kate Rooney.
Ms Serle says the association’s aim is to give the community a knowledgeable voice on flood protection matters.
“Our idea is to present good ideas, to think about issues and push them forward … and from that seek collaboration, consultation, engagement, discussion,” she says.
One move she is championing is the return of property-specific flood charts that would allow residents to understand how badly an event might affect their homes. She laments that many locals were unaware of the risks to their homes before the 2022 floods, and that information from emergency services was not provided in a translatable way.
“When the emergency app goes ding … you are given the river flood level,” she says. “But people have no idea what that means at their own home. The only way you know is if you’ve had it surveyed.
“Many people who were caught in this didn’t realise that it was a floodplain, even though it would have been on the title.”
Ms Serle says the flood chart measures were developed and deployed in the 2000s but have since gone away. She says the onus is on state statutory authority Melbourne Water to bring this resource back, to allow residents to plan and prepare.
In April, the authority updated its modelling to predict a 2024 flood scenario, plus projected climate change impacts.
A Melbourne Water spokesperson says the authority is now undertaking a global tender “to identify and assess all flood mitigation solutions for the area”.
“We aim to identify the best flood mitigation options for the catchment, focusing on infrastructure solutions such as levees, retarding basins, improved drainage, water management strategies and flood-resilient building and design features,” the spokesperson told Insurance News.
The authority has also encouraged homeowners to contact it to confirm their individual property’s potential flood depth and to engage with a surveyor to establish their floor level.
However, Ms Serle and the MCRA believe this should be the responsibility of Melbourne Water.
“[Melbourne Water is] supposed to manage the catchment, to participate in how the development is done around it, to explain flood risk, to keep the community aware of what’s going on, to protect it,” Ms Serle says. “It is effectively doing this work [property-specific flood charts], the council has the same data … but that data is not coming to the people.”
The association has also been at odds with Melbourne Water over its response to the 2022 floods, including its own inquiry into its actions.
Ms Serle acknowledges that the authority has committed to changes, but says the community “does not have confidence in the floodplain manager”.
“We think it’s not quite right to just allow government to go off by itself in a quiet back room … we say we need a really broad, interdisciplinary approach.”
She says her organisation wants to take mitigation “into our own hands”. It has assembled a panel of international flood engineering experts, held consultations with natural resource management companies and worked with hydrology specialists. Her team has made the second stage of the Melbourne Water tender process.
Ms Serle remains committed to holding the authority accountable.
“The team we have could do the work … and whether we are awarded the right to do the work or are tossed out … we will be doing parallel testing to see what’s going on and to raise our objections, misgivings about the flood modelling that was done,” she says.
“We think it’s not quite right to just allow government to go off by itself in a quiet back room … we say we need a really broad, interdisciplinary approach that brings in everybody … from the start.”
Ms Serle also has lofty ambitions for the association’s BUILTresilient project to construct a property that is adaptable, replicable and, most importantly, insurable. She says the project would provide a clear “gold standard” for a resilient property.
“I want it to stand as an example for Victoria and anywhere else that’s getting flooded. So people can see, ‘Oh, there are the panels you use … that’s the concrete sealer … that’s the sort of design.’ ”
University of Melbourne professor Sarah Bell, who is the City of Melbourne chair in urban resilience and innovation, has taken an interest in the project, and architecture researchers have been recruited to develop the building design.
“If cities are to become more resilient to climate change, then we need to adapt existing buildings, infrastructures, streets and landscapes,” Professor Bell tells Insurance News. “BUILTresilient is a great opportunity for us to learn how to retrofit homes to be more resilient, and how to change policy and industry to allow this to happen at the scale and pace needed across the country.”
Ms Serle says insurer IAG has also expressed interest in the project and the Maribyrnong Community Recovery Association has begun talks with the Insurance Council of Australia to promote it.
She believes it shapes as a “big chance” for the industry to commit to resilience and deliver on its corporate social responsibility.
“The main thing is to create it, so people and insurance companies can see and realise, ‘We can do that,’ and that’s why I want them to be part of the funders,” she says. “They can support this. They can be part of it … and realise we have to get into resilience and finally start to move away from ‘as is’.”
Ms Serle says it is in insurers’ financial interest to support such programs, arguing current business models are “mismanaging” funds through a lack of emphasis on long-term resilience.
She notes that in her ongoing property claim, her insurer has had to pay twice to remediate the home, which would not have happened if it was built with resilience in mind.
“Insurance companies should be making a lot more money … for their insurance, for their shareholders, [but] because they’re running their business so badly, they’re incurring costs they should not incur.
“If this community goes into a second flood – which it will unless something happens – all the houses have been put back ‘as is’, so the scale of damage is going to be the same.
“If we’d move to a resilient model, then the amount of damage would be so much lower, the cost [for] the insurer would be so much lower.”
Ms Serle points to programs overseas in which homeowners in high-risk areas are “rewarded” through grants to build more resilient properties.
She believes that in the era of climate change, such methods are needed to ensure homes are protected and insurance remains affordable.
“Things are going to get worse and [events happen] more often. You can’t have a business model that doesn’t adapt … that’s what’s driven the [association’s] projects.”
