Brisbane agencies close as city braces for floods

FRIDAY UPDATE: Hello From GPY&R, Fortitude Valley.All of our agency are safe, well and working. We had two days working from home but still managed to get Event Response work our for Suncorp Insurance and Suncorp Bank. We are very proud of all of our team and their efforts.We are all back working today and hope to get our clients and their businesses back to normal as soon as possible.Take it easy out there other Brisbane agencies and shout if you need a hand. And that is an honest and human offer (for those sceptics out there).Rich.

As Brisbane braces for its worst floods in decades most agencies have closed, sending staff home to work remotely, or to sort out their house if it’s in a flood danger zone. 

For some agencies the precaution was taken in case the office flooded while others acted to ensure staff got home before main roads were cut and public transport came to a standstill with police advising people to vacate the CBD.

The floods, which are yet to reach their peak, have already caused widespread devastation in Queensland with reports estimating that 19,700 homes in Brisbane and 3,500 commercial blocks will be flooded over the next 24 hours.

Nancy Hartley, joint ECD of SapientNitro Brisbane, says that all staff are safe and have been sent home to be with their families until further notice. Calls have been diverted to the Melbourne office.

“Everyone’s home, everyone’s pretty much stopped working. Basically everyone who’s not affected is out helping people they know prepare for the flood,” she says, having just returned from helping her neighbours move all their stuff out of their waterfront property. 

“Whatever work needs to be done is getting done but a lot of businesses are in the same position as the agencies. It’s like life has been suspended for a couple of days to deal with the devastation. It’s really hard to comprehend unless you are looking at it – there’s boats and cafes that have broken away and are floating down the river.”

Paul Cornwell, partner at Brisbane-based BCM, says management decided at 9am to send everyone home, effectively shutting down the office until further notice. 

“The flood hasn’t peaked yet, but there’s a fair bit of Brisbane flooded right now. We do have some people who already have water under their houses, and a few others that will get flood damage, so they are all at home dealing with that and there’s various people from the office offering accommodation for those people affected,” he says.

BCM has set up a Tumblr site to keep its 80 staff updated and they’ll wait out the next two days before making a decision on when to re-open. 

“As far as we know, and we are sort of in contact with everyone, everyone is fine and anybody that had a place that could have been affected has evacuated and gone to someone else’s place that’s higher. Anyone with cars in low lying areas has moved them, so no-one we know has had anything serious happen to them or their family or friends,” says Cornwell.

He expects people will be stuck at home for the next day, but admits it’s surreal to be bracing for floodson what was mostly a sunny and humid day.

“I just went past the river near where I live and itis about to break its banks, there’s an incredible amount of water coming down,there’s boats adrift and people’s pontoons are drifting past.”

BCM’s client, Heritage Building Society, based in Toowoomba, one of the worst affected areas, lost six of their branches in the floods, but all of the building society’s staff are safe.

Pictured top: The floor below Cutting Edge Post Production in Brisbane, where the day before editors and animators became sandbag fillers as the facility came under threat of flooding.