Weather forecasts originally indicated that the worst of the 2016 floods would fall on North and North-East Tasmania, and it wasn't until the Sunday June 5 that State Emergency Service officers realised the extent of danger in the North-West region, an inquest heard on Wednesday.
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Former SES NW regional manager, Wayne Richards, testified that the Bureau of Meteorology were still predicting major flooding in the North and North-East on Saturday morning - a day before flooding started.
"I think they were saying with some of that rain extending into the Western Tiers, which we tend to think of as the Deloraine area, or maybe the back of Sheffield," he said.
He did not become aware of major flooding in the NW until reports emerged in early evening on the Sunday, he said.
The inquest by Coroner Simon Cooper is examining the flood response that led to the drowning death of 75 year-old Mary Allford, who became trapped in her home in Latrobe in the early hours of June 6, 2016.
Mr Richards said he traveled to Launceston that Saturday morning to participate in a Tasmanian Bands League competition, and would "certainly" not have done so had he been warned earlier of the risk of flooding in his region.
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But because of the smaller number of expected calls due to the forecasts, SES managers had decided to divert calls for assistance from the NW into the Northern Operations Centre in Launceston, he said.
Mr Richards, who was scheduled to rotate into the position of duty officer that day, said he arrived at Launceston College at 8.30 Sunday morning to help organise the band competition.
But as calls in the North-West began to increase in volume during Sunday morning, he said he made the decision to shift focus to work.
"When we got some calls and it appeared the weather was going to deteriorate, I indicated to them all [at Launceston College] that I needed to move into work mode."
Mr Richards told the inquest that a large proportion of the NW SES region's resources were diverted to the search for a missing person in Bakers Beach, and that this hampered plans after the extent of flooding in the region became clear.
The SES unit responsible for setting up the NW operations centre - a call centre to take incoming calls and direct SES units to people in distress - was involved in the search at Bakers Beach, he said.
Earlier, former SES director Andrew Lea told the inquest that he had held concerns about Mr Richards' "chronic behavioural issues", but believed he was capable of operating well in an emergency.
"From my level I was confident that he could handle emergencies quite well up until 2016 when we had the flood," Mr Lea said.
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He said Mr Richards had been hit by a " "perfect storm of circumstances" during the event, including staff absences and inaccurate weather forecasts.
Counsel assisting the inquest, Letitia Fox, listed the many concerns reported about with Mr Richards' behaviour, including his mental health status, his organisational, communication and interpersonal skills, as well as complaints about inappropriate actions from office staff and doubts over whether he was putting into practice various flood plan exercises.
"On top of that, you had a concern that he had stopped seeing his psychologist, and may not be continuing to see his psychologist or counsellor," Ms Fox said.
"Why was he able to remain ... with all of these concerns, in a position of North-West regional manager with the knowledge that in an emergency incident, he would be the incident controller?"
Mr Lea answered: "We had an intense desire to see Wayne through his problems, to see that he can overcome those issues.
"I thought quite sincerely that, operationally, he was OK. He could coordinate resources, he could put out media information, because he had done it with other real life events.
"He did have difficulties, but each time we intervened, he did show improvement, there was light at the end of the tunnel, we wanted to find that and see him succeed."
Mr Richards left the SES in 2021.
The inquest continues.
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