I have spent much of today and yesterday responding to emails from well wishers
asking if I am OK in the floods so I will give my own first hand account twenty
miles or so from ground zero.
I am happy to report that we are all fine and not a part of what your front
page news is currently showing but we had a much to close for comfort close
call.
Its been raining for weeks and 3 weeks or so ago the news was 5 or 6 hours
north and inland where the news showed people being rescued from rooftops by
helicopter but other than the news and lots of rain we werent really affected.
About two weeks ago here the rain picked up - a lot. Torrential rain kept
coming but other than no access to outdoor activities we werent really
affected. I pretty much have lived on ebay recently anyway. The roads have been
closed regularly up north and sunday the road a few miles north of me was
closed. Everywhere north of me was cut off except by helicopter.
Monday, in Toowoomba, a town a hundred miles inland from Brisbane is when the
international news started showing you pictures of brisbane. A meters high wall
of water and mud out of nowhere suddendly leveled Toowoomba's business district
and left carnage in its wake. Towns downstream were devestated and thats when
you got all that video footage of cars being swept everywhere and helicopters
rescueing people. I started regularly hearing helicopters flying low as they
search for people needing rescue. A local news channel made a video of a family
on the top of a white van flowing down a raging river hundreds of meters wide.
That video probably was the biggest most graphic image of the floods and the
premiers office and news stations were all inundated with calls wondering how
they were. Yesterday the premier reported at a news conference that the mom and
9 year old boy was rescued but when the helicopter returned for dad he was gone
and is now listed as
missing. If he ever turns up in one piece it will be the biggest rescue story
of the floods and he will get rich being interviewed by oprah and similar
people but it probably wont happen.
This is all nearby to me and in places that I am very familiar with but in
reality its all just news to me.
Sunday night my chickens house got flooded and I moved them to a small unused
shed for a temporary accomodation.
Tuesday morning my wife comes is saying that we have a pond in the back yard.
Water has made it to the new chicken home and I piled up some pallets for them
to live on. All eight of my usually very pampered chickens spends a couple of
sad, soggy and miserable days with no roosts camped out on the top of a stack
of pallets. They are not happy chickens.
There is a little creek that overflowed its banks a short distance from me and
water is slowly coming up to a storage shed and in the extremily vicious
thunder storm convinces us to pile things up in case it gets flooded. I still
have hundreds of boxes unopened from the move from New Zealand last year so we
decide to put the fragile and valuable stuff on top of the less valuable boxes
and as we are done we get a standardized government text saying that there are
flash floods near us and that we are advised to report to an evacuation centre
nearby. A couple minutes later we lose both phone and internet (Our cell phone
company apparantly had a building full of equipment flood and I never did find
out why we lost internet).
Then, just before noon some lady from the preschool where my two kiddies are at
knocks on the door saying they have been trying to call me and that I have to
go pick up the kids quick as the police had ordered the schools
closed and any kids not picked up would be taken to an evacuation centre
because they were not going to let the kids be there by one occlock which was
high tide and they were worried about what would happen during high tide.
Back home the water slowly comes up my yard. Like the tide. Not a bit of wind
and almost calm except for the buckets of water raining down. Water is getting
very close to flooding us. My eight chickens are huddled together on top of the
pallet all wet and miserable and the water is within inches of flooding us to.
Its getting close to the 1PM high tide and we wonder if the water will keep
coming after high tide. We are a good ten miles from the sea. I am 4 inches
from getting flooded but luckily that 4 inches of concrete saved me. Just two
streets down from me the streets just a bit lower and closer to the (Now not so
little) creek have the police going down the street in boats looking for people
who need help or evacuation.
The water goes down pretty fast after high tide and while still soggy by 3PM
there is no longer a pond in my yard. The rain also stops for a while and over
the next hour we hear low flying helicopters a few times.
4:30 I go into town (only a mile away) for pizza (Tuesday is cheap pizza day).
Some roads are blocked and others are 4WD roads only. There is still massive
amounts of water and even the opened roads still have lots of water and the
closed areas has water that will go up past the wheels of my hilux.
There are a lot of people walking around very wet and soggy and the only
business's open is the pizza place and a liquor store (Lifes essentials). I now
live on an island with no way to go more than a few miles unless you had a
helicopter. (I always dreamed of living on an island). I can only imagine how
bad the town was flooded 3 hours earlier at high tide when there must have been
a meter more water. Towns within 10 miles were still cut off the next day.
Next day the rains stopped and the residual water starts drying up nicely in
the 30+ degree heat.
Wednesday we are back to normal. Its like nothing ever happened except for some
leaves and sticks that still needed clearing up. There was no noticable
evidence of the previous adys flood. Some people had soggy basements but my
extra 4 inchs of concrete ment that I can get back to ebay rather than having a
cleanup day. We hear a helicopter a couple times and some people from the city
come to see how we are doing and if we had debries that needed removal. But
for the most part it is just another news day. And of course what a news day it
was. Thats when Brisbane started being front page news as you are all I am sure
very aware off. Luckily I am over twenty miles from the river that runs through
downtown brisbane and this massive carnage and destruction that you see on the
news is not affecting me except that it is almost impossible to buy fruit and
(Particularly) vegetables. It is strange going to a grocery store seeing empty
space where the fruit
section is normally at. We are told that vegetable prices will double.
Brisbane news hasnt been reporting crocodiles and venemous snakes swimming in
the streets like they were reporting a couple weeks ago in Rockhampton but
there have been reports of Bull Sharks swimming in the streets in Brisbane.
When you watch the news and see disasters which are so common in the news,
wither it be floods in india, hurricanes in Louisiania, earthquakes in haiti
etc you see so many natural disasters that you almost become numb to it all.
Its always somewhere else and affecting somebody else far away that you watch
the 6 oclock news for. Its borderline entertaining almost.
But when you are that close it feels a little different. When we moved from New
Zealand last year we almost moved to Forest Hill. We didnt because the place we
wanted got rented out a couple days before we arrived and the landlord didnt
want to wait longer for us.
The entire town of Forest Hill yesterday was evacuated by helicopter - often by
people clinging on the roof of their houses. We had a scare and a very close
call but it could have been a lot worse. I wont ever live near any river here
in Australia. Even little creeks are off limits from now on.
Meanwhile my eight chickens are back home but in a now fenced off open area
where they have free access to my wifes compost heap that they seem to love and
are now all very happy chickens again - except that they are complaining that
they are being fed way to much proper chicken food and not enough table scraps.
A lot of people living along the Brisbane river will be a bit longer recovering
from the flood than us.
Cheers
DEAN
Northern Brisbane area
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