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More On The Floods — Why Now?
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More On The Floods

The ABC is reporting on the aftermath: Residents heartbroken by flood devastation

The Brisbane River has now fallen to just over 3 metres and will continue dropping overnight, as residents return home to face the destruction and pick up the pieces.

The flood, which has claimed 15 lives so far, hit a lower-than-expected peak of 4.46 metres on Friday morning, inundating more than 20,000 homes and businesses across the Queensland capital.

Sixty-one people are still missing, with police holding “grave fears” for 12 people who disappeared when homes were destroyed by a wall of water in the Lockyer Valley west of Brisbane late on Monday.

The systemic rains that have plagued Queensland have moved to the south: Tasmania braces for flash flooding, and are part of a larger problem of flooding on both sides of the central latitudes affected by the La Niña off the coast of Peru: Floods leave a million Sri Lankans homeless, and Brazil mudslides kill more than 350.

The superwarm sea surface temperatures are putting massive amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere and it is returning to earth in these flooding rains.

If you would like to help, this is as good a place as any to start: Queensland Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal

4 comments

1 Kryten42 { 01.16.11 at 6:34 pm }

I blame moronic a’hole tosser such as yourself duffy. Believe it or not (and I know you won’t, because you are a total tosser), but the World doesn’t change just because idiots like you have orgasmic fantasies about it being different than it actually is! But… stupid is as stupid say’s and does. One thing can be said for you, at least you are consistent. A consistently moron tosser.

Right. Now onto something infinitely more important than duffy’s massively overinflated fantasy-land ego and blissfully willful ignorance of reality.

The floods hit Victoria’s Nth once again this weekend. The Campaspie river broke it’s banks (which was expected, but happened quicker and was worse than expected). 46 Towns have been flooded and/or evacuated as of this morning in Victoria. This is now the worst flood we’ve had here in my memory.

Historic floodwaters swamp Victorian towns

Victorian towns face unprecedented flooding

Major flooding isolates Far West residents

2 Bryan { 01.16.11 at 9:37 pm }

I have been following them, and the discussion of the Super La Niña in the Pacific. They seem to tracking along the same lines of the last time this happened in the mid-1970s, when Australia also experienced massive flooding.

With rain falling at over 100mm/hour I don’t see how you can control water flow, especially when the land is soaked after weeks of rain. I’m not sure that people understand that this has been going on for more than 40 days with only minor periods of respite.

They are already talking about basic food prices rising by 30% worldwide, and if Russia has another dry year it will get worse. Obviously the flooding in the mines will have a major impact on countries that import from Australia, like China, as well as, domestic users, so more commodity prices will rise. And none of that factors in the losses to individuals, especially the loss of family and friends.

i remember reading that Rudd had to be treated for some sort of infection from wading in the water, so disease will follow on after the water recedes. The recovery, to the extent it is possible, will take years. Some businesses will never be back, because the owners just can’t recover from the losses.

I know you are busier than a one-armed paper hanger, but be careful out there, and know that there are people in other places who are watching, even if they don’t always mention it.

3 Kryten42 { 01.17.11 at 1:30 am }

LOL Yes… yes I am that busy! (I know and like that phrase, but my favorite is “busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest”, though yours is shorter.) 😉 😆

Well… the plan was to move this weekend, but because of flooding and several other complications, looks like it will now be the following weekend. (you’d think that an extra week would make it easier, but in fact it makes things difficult. We’d already organized things like changing utilities (phone, electricity, gas, water), and we *KNOW* one or more of them will cut us off, even though we’ve told them the change in plans! So we’ll probably end up with no phone and/or power come Monday. And the Movers weren’t happy since they had to change someone else’s plans to get us on Sat, and now have to change things again.) *sigh*

And yep, Rudd did indeed have to get treatment after wading in the dirty water, and to his credit, said he’d do it again (and I believe he would). 🙂

I’ll post in the new thread about the floods here in Vic! And many thanks once again for posting about this, it’s appreciated by many. 🙂

Oh! I discovered something interesting whilst packing to move… I have hundreds of backup CD’s from the 90’s and past decade. I decided to check them because we know CD’s don’t last forever. However, I did the old backups on expensive Kodak Type S (maximum data life) gold CD’s. (remember them>) 😉 They became hard to find over the last five years or so, and the new CD’s are the silver or bluish tinted types. Well, all of the Kodak Gold CD’s I checked worked, (and some were 12-15 years old), and many of the newer ones from 6-10 years old couldn’t be read! (some had visible anomalies on the dye layer). I guess the expensive Kodak CD’s were well worth the price! If you want long life backup, the new ones are crap! Doncha just love how everything is so much better these days? Pfffffft!

4 Bryan { 01.17.11 at 9:32 pm }

That is the way of the world: as soon as something is shown to work in the real world, they stop selling it and introduce something that will fail.

As anyone who has ever moved knows – the utilities will always screw up. They are very dependable that way. Normally it is your fault because you called too early or you called to late rather than at the exact picosecond when they were ready to deal with it.

It will be over soon, just keep telling yourself…