 a response across the state. But at the outset I just want to say to the states that the major focus of course has been on the response point that there are now a number of communities across Queensland where the recovery plans have started coming. Places like Vanderburg, Alfa, Jericho and Dalby where planning is underway to help those communities recover and to get people back into their homes. And obviously in some cases they're going to take a considerable amount of time and in other cases a reasonably short period of time. And again we've just asked people to be patient. The emergency authorities for local disaster management groups and district disaster groups will be very, very hard to plan appropriate times and places where people can return to their homes. The other major focus right across the plant-affected areas is on the resupply, particularly how they've isolated communities and isolated properties. Also through the disaster management arrangements a lot of work has been undertaken with the major retailers and the independence and transport operators to make sure that essential food supplies and other items can get through to the shops so that people can maintain as close to normal life as possible with those basic necessities. A couple of other significant messages. In some of the flooded communities we've seen too many people drive through flood waters causing significant waits which is causing additional damage to homes and businesses. And we've just really asked the people to be to slow down, not drive through flood waters. It's causing additional unnecessary damage in a lot of communities and causing a great deal of concern. Some people are out of their businesses, out of their homes. There's too many instances of people driving through flood waters causing additional damage. So those few comments I might just hand over now to the Deputy Commissioner Stewart, who spoke with us today, and give more detail in the operational response. Minister, thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. In terms of the response phase, our focus is on two major areas at the moment. Obviously the situation with Fitzroy River System at Rockhampton and our other focus is the ongoing issues of the Croninvine River and south of Dalby Croninvine area. In relation to Rockhampton, obviously we are looking at complete isolation of Rockhampton over the next few days. We believe that the roads and airports are likely to be closed later today or early tomorrow morning. Certainly to commercial traffic the airport will be closed as I understand it this afternoon. So there is significant challenges for us in dealing with the resupply and making sure the safety of all the people at Rockhampton as the flood water system continues to rise there. In the south of the Croninvine area we have the townships of Sarat and St George and there in Bandy. They will be ultimately affected by the water flows down the Croninvine. Sarat is in a situation where we are planning to advise the local residents of potential fights and impact on them in that community and following that it will be St George's turn. But we need to understand that that water flow may take as much as a week or 10 days to reach St George to AP. So this response phase will be ongoing for at least another two weeks in our estimation at this time. As the minister rightly said a lot of work is being done not only in these bigger centres but in the smaller centres for instance Blackwater which is out on the Central Highlands that is still cut off and we are looking to resupply the food and other commodities into that community today as early as today. There are smaller townships, Peralba again is one of those that we are monitoring very, very closely to ensure that the community there is looked after and their safety is assured. In terms of the specifics for flood lights, numbers of people, I will hand over to Minister Dawson who is the chair of the State Disaster Coordination System. Just looking at our current evacuations I will probably touch on the largest area first. Currently in the Central Highlands which is at Emeralds we are running four evacuation centres. There are 508 people currently residing in those evacuation centres. There are probably about a thousand people relocated to family and friends in other parts of the town. There are 1,000 houses that have suffered the inundations inside their premises at various levels. There are approximately 3,000 houses that have water in and around their yards so underneath their houses were advised that a hundred percent of industrial premises have suffered partial or full water inundations. 75% of commercial premises have suffered partial or full water inundations. Power has been disconnected to 500 homes and at least 250 houses and 300 commercial premises are going to require some form of electrical inspection required to the power being reconnected. We don't expect the bridge across the town which has been cut in half to be visible until Tuesday and although visible I would say that it will still need to be inspected and therefore we ask for more patience in that space. We are looking at the resupply of Emeralds and we are looking at the various facilities to do that and we are talking with both the local disaster management group and the district disaster management group and those activities are well in hand. Moving to Rockcanton, Rockcanton has the Macquaration Centre established and the Sports Centre of Central Queensland University at Yambour and they have a capacity for up to 2,000 people. Currently the numbers are very low for four persons currently at the facility. The highway at the time of briefing was still open. We are watching that and it does change our, my error, as we get closer to the point where the highway will eventually be cut. We are saying to people to listen to or ring into 13 at 1940 or only listen to in forecast and as soon as that becomes impossible we will advise of that facility in closing. The commercial flights of the Deputy Commissioners indicated we will put the device we have received will cease operations this afternoon into Rockcanton and it could be some time before those commercial flights will be commenced. However the residents sleeping around Rockcanton can expect to see light aircraft and rotary wing helicopter assets flying from the airport in operations in support of disaster management response. That's really for Rockcanton and Emeralds. Theodore again is still totally evacuated and will remain so for some time. The border piece are going back to what they were prior to the town being evacuated so they are going back to the same levels and that's it. That's food drops. How is that being taken in and what's the response from the community? Certainly both of those food drops in. Certainly the food drops that we are talking about are in the isolated community so that's by mainly by rotary wing aircraft of course. There is no community that is actually desperate at this point in time. We're trying to stay ahead of that. One of our greatest challenges over the coming weeks and it will be weeks is not only to resupply these towns in these next few days until the highways reopen but it will be to service all those very small communities and isolated farms and properties right across the central and southern parts of Queensland that will start to run out of necessities. So that is a huge focus for us and obviously we do that in conjunction with the hope of disaster management. Are you expecting an evacuation? Look it is highly likely. These again are getting to record level floods but we do have time in terms of the number of days that we lead up that we have and we are keeping the community informed. We are hoping that many people will choose to stop evacuating if that is necessary. We also over the last few days and the Minister made a wish to comment on this. He's utilised the emergency alert system that is in close for us. What do you do when we're there and some of the words are controversial for that? I'm sorry? How many people are in that? Yeah it's about 650 that's around at the present time. The numbers may be slightly smaller than that because people are away on holidays. How do you deal with the emergency system? How do they handle all of this? Is this a massive event and they've been on course for quite a number of days now? The tick management will be with the full-time and least-deserved personnel and police and also of course our SES personnel is front of mind of the Master Coordinator. There's been a lot of work done to identify and release SES volunteers. They are being moved to a centre throughout the state. I was in Dalby yesterday and they're up with SES volunteers from the Sunshine Trust in Brisbane. So there are people being moved around in various parts of the state to give the local people the relief and support they need. Assassins have been held with a Victorian counterpart and officers of the citizens are coming through. At this stage it's been managed with services, but certainly as time goes by, particularly with recovery codes, the tick management will be in full years and will remain as an independent issue. But with a lot of work being done to make sure that people get the relief and support they need. How likely is it that that will mean outside the community how Victoria needs to come along with it? If I can answer that. Victoria and New South Wales are actually providing special staff to assist the SES both here in this centre and particularly up in the southern Downs area and that will start Monday but as you can imagine there are a number of issues that we have to take into account. And primary to that is certainly the ability to house those people because putting them into these areas in fact adds to some of the complications with the in the evacuation centres and what have you. But that is a plan for this coming week from Victoria and New South Wales. We're also currently in negotiations for some specialist policing staff to assist and in fact I've been talking to the Deputy Commissioner from Victoria Le Smoy on that very issue and as those details become known we will provide them to you. That is an issue and again the Minister may wish to talk about that overall first but basically we have in Condemine and Theodore