Interview with Norman Fry, Disaster Co-ordinator for the Toowoomba Regional Council at the time of the 2011 floods

Jane Goodall: One of our central concerns in this book is with the gap between what people experience in a traumatic event and the ways in which the story gets told more widely so that people who are distant from it get a sense of it through reportage and then they start to see those who have experienced the trauma through a certain lens. As disaster co-ordinator in the immediate location of the Toowoomba flood event of 10 January, you were in a unique position to see how the story was being put together. How did you first become aware of having a major situation on your hands?