Unlike following the bushfires, the post-apocalyptic landscape looks stunning.

Stunning, that is, until one looks closer at ruined roads, bridges, parks, paths, sewer mains, and indeed everything lying close to flooded ground - above and below.

I personally know the cost to some individuals because I have direct contact, through calls, lending a hand, providing information, hearing stories.

I do as any reasonable person would and does in the situation.

I also know directly the cost to some staff in council: the superhuman efforts they've gone to - and will continue to have to go to - in dealing with a community-wide disaster as it happens, and then the aftermath.

We still don't know the full cost to the community itself and its council, because the damage hasn't been tallied.

But rest assured that the impact on local productivity and delivery will go on for months and years, certainly.

If you were worried before that your pothole wasn't fixed, then realise the problem has just magnified inordinately.

It is realistically beyond the scope of your council to just keep on with normal expectations, as if an apocalypse did not just happen.

We all need some extra empathy.

As councillors, we'll be progressively learning more details of the damage inflicted, and the question of competing priorities going forward.

But there must also be a bigger picture take on this: in learning from this event, preparing for the as-yet-unknown future disaster, and preventative action to avoid worsening disasters and the inevitable cost of them.

Repair, preparation, and prevention.

It was so timely that council finally made its 'climate emergency declaration' before this flood occurred.

Now that's out of the way, we no longer need to ask ourselves whether the global climate is important in our planning!

Cr Intemann's opinions are not necessarily council's.