Australia — Navy commence operations in Moreton Bay

A Coastal Mine Hunter, HMAS Huon has com­menced oper­a­tions in More­ton Bay today as part of Oper­a­tion Queens­land Flood Assist. Fit­ted with sophis­ti­cat­ed sonar equip­ment the ship will search for debris that pos­es a nav­i­ga­tion­al haz­ard to ship­ping in More­ton Bay and the Bris­bane Riv­er.

The mis­sion, as request­ed by Emer­gency Man­age­ment Queens­land will be direct­ed by a Mar­itime Task Group, estab­lished at Bulim­ba Bar­racks. Com­man­der Mar­itime Task Group Com­man­der Pete Ted­man said prov­ing the main ship­ping chan­nels are clear of obstruc­tions from the floods ulti­mate­ly allows the recov­ery effort to pro­ceed faster, rebuild­ing to accel­er­ate, and restores vital eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty for all of Queensland.

“Our mis­sion is to assist in mak­ing More­ton Bay safe for ship­ping. It is a large task and will take con­sid­er­able time but our men and women are well trained to achieve it,” he said. “The oppor­tu­ni­ty for Naval per­son­nel to help out their fel­low Aus­tralians will be reward­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly and per­son­al­ly, and we remain com­mit­ted to com­plet­ing all tasks request­ed by Emer­gency Man­age­ment Queens­land,” Com­man­der Ted­man said.

The Task Group includes head­quar­ters per­son­nel, Clear­ance Divers, a Deploy­able Geospa­tial Team and three Navy Fleet units: HMAS Huon and two Hydro­graph­ic Sur­vey Motor Launch­es, HMA Ships Paluma and Shep­par­ton arriv­ing lat­er today. 

Defence con­tin­ues to oper­ate close­ly with and in sup­port of, Queens­land Emer­gency Ser­vices to pro­vide per­son­nel on the ground, sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise, plan­ning, and coor­di­na­tion of ADF heli­copters and air­craft as part of the response and as we move to restora­tion and recov­ery operations.

As part of Oper­a­tion Queens­land Flood Assist, ADF per­son­nel have been under­tak­ing a mul­ti­tude of tasks includ­ing clear­ance of rub­bish and assis­tance in road clo­sures. The ADF com­mit­ment to Oper­a­tion Queens­land Flood Assist cur­rent­ly con­sists of about 1600 per­son­nel spread between Bris­bane, Rock­hamp­ton, Townsville, Amber­ley, Ipswich, Toowoom­ba, the Lock­y­er Val­ley, Theodore and St George. 

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

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