Toowoomba Regional Council CEO Ken Gouldthorp has told the Queensland flood inquiry that earlier warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) wouldn’t have made a difference to the result.

He says further consultation would have left the disaster management team in the same dilemma knowing something “might happen”.

“We already had our local disaster control centre on standby,” Mr Gouldthorp said. “We might have activated it 20 minutes earlier, but there was probably not a lot more we would have been able to do.”

The hearing was also told BOM data had provided conflicting information, with rainfall estimates predicting a one-in-370 year event while radar images only showed it as “moderate to upper moderate”.

“There can be real uncertainties in estimating rainfall rates from radar,” BOM Regional Director Jim Davidson told the inquiry. Although the validity of the data couldn’t be discounted, “it appears the estimates from the radar didn’t show the true rainfall rates”.

Hearings will continue this week in Goondiwindi, St George and Brisbane.