Melting ice caps or Noah's Ark?
Melting ice caps or Noah's Ark?
How come you guys aren't looting?
If the first thing I thought about was Florida and then proceed onto laughing, am i a horrible person? or were you alluding to that in the first place?Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Florida...? Maybe you mean New Orleans?
Wooooooooooooooooooow....Now I'm racist AND stupid. I might that elusive bigoted redneck recessive gene...Florida...? Maybe you mean New Orleans?
I can tell you this has been a VERY weird summer in Australia. Down here in Melbourne, Victoria we have never had this much rain in at least 10 years. I can't remember a summer like this. February is usually the hot and humid month, with December and January usually dry heat and burning sun, but its been raining nearly every single bloody day for months.
What is amazing about these floods is that much of it has happened in the highlands of the Great Dividing Range where people thought they were safe. It has then powered downhill sweeping all in its path.
These floods are probably going to be the biggest $ damage disaster in Australian history. Floods are slower than bushfires so we wont see a death toll like the Victorian fires just outside Melbourne a couple of years back.
In fact I think this is the first summer I remember where Victora or New South Wales has not had some sort of major bushfire. The 2009 fires were the result of 10 years of dried out bushland and a 46 degree Celsius day (114 deg F). The ground is so sodden now there probably wont be a big fire for a year or two.
^^You're right about that, very weird Summer. Brisbane area usually has some rain end of November to beginning of December, but this time it didn't stop until last week. I was reading online that the damage is estimated to be around $13 billion AUD. This'll put a strain on the local economy and what not.
Actually there have been a number of cases of looting, but as far as I know, in almost every case the idiots have been captured by police who happened to be in the area
Crazy before and after pictures, inner city suburb of Indooroopilly: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12176283
More pictures here: http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/g...3022068?page=1
Kangaroo Point, opposite the CBD
Salisbury
Brisbane looks like a beautiful city.
Never been, but my girlfriend is from Queensland. She left many years ago as she said it was full of uncultured bogans.
Everyone knows Melbourne is the best city in Australia.
^^lol you're not that far from the truth. But it aint so badIt's a nice place with a lot of varied people.
If this precipitation had happened during your winter, and it was snow.....would a slow melt into spring have made it easier?
^^Brisbane doesn't have snow during winter. In fact, I don't think there's snow anywhere in Queensland. The only states where there is some snow, are New South Wales and Victoria, but even then it's in the mountainous parts. But to answer your original question, I don't know.
It's been confirmed that through out the entire state of Queensland, 30 are dead, 40 are suspected to be dead whilst 61 are missing. And the other day Brisbane's floods claimed its first life, a 24 year old man was trying to get to his dads house to see how bad it was but a storm drain sucked him in
I was at work today, and since my suburb is surrounded by the suburbs of Rocklea, Moorooka, and Archefield, which were stated to have had the most damage done, a number of people told me their stories, which was sad to hear. A lot of people will be out of work and this will definitely bring down the economy of Brisbane and QLD.
A news article from today, here. Since the flood waters have, for the most part, receded back into the river, people are getting a first look at their properties since they were swallowed by the river.
Anyhow here are some interesting before and after photos. You just slide the bar along to see the difference:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/q...-1225987603983
These photos are from yesterday:
Industrial zone of Rocklea (literally, down the road from me)
Inner city suburbs
Construction site in the CBD
It's a nice city when it isn't flooded
As Draco said, no snow in Australia except up in mountain regions where not many people live anyway. In decades past before my time there were freak snowstorms in urban centers apparently, but winters are not as cold as they once were according to old timers.
It wasn't that long ago (1 or 2 years?) some some states were battling severe dust storms from the drought. Also the rain has killed off the locust plague in Victoria.
All the oil in that first industrial picture is kinda nasty, and the inner city picture looks like Katrina
Will insurance companies cover some of the damages for homeowners? Or will it all be excluded as An Act of God?
Between droughts and bush fires, now rain and flooding---Aussies sure do have a lot of extremes!
I suspect many probably didn't have flood insurance, but who knows? I just skimmed some Aussie articles about it and it seems that many people probably had to proactively seek out flood insurance, which many homeowners probably didn't do (the figures were that only about 7,000 claims have been filed so far but there are folks who still need to get back home and assess damage).
^^Depends which insurance company you're with. This guy from Suncorp insurance (part of a major Australian bank) came out on tv saying how his company already covers you for flood insurance and the likes. I'm not sure about other companies. But I also heard that the Australian government will be giving out money to all those who had their homes submerged, although I'm not exactly sure.
Anyhow I'll be going today to volunteer and clean up some suburb!
“It is going to take months for the clean-up and two years for the reconstruction,” Campbell Newman, lord mayor of the Queensland state capital, said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corp. today.
Flooding across the northeastern state of Queensland, Australia’s largest coal exporter accounting for about 20 percent of the nation’s A$1.3 trillion economy ($1.28 trillion), has devastated homes, destroyed crops, closed mines and killed at least 27 people in the past six weeks. Heavy rainfall and floodwaters surging south through the nation’s river systems are threatening more towns and may add to the damage bill that already runs into billions of dollars.
“The scale of this disaster is probably one of the biggest in economic terms in Australia’s history,” Treasurer Wayne Swan, who was a sewerage maintenance worker when floods devastated Brisbane in 1974, told ABC television today.
and Brazil is flooding too, with more rain expected.
It's a sad reality, but at least the Australian/QLD government is prepared for such disasters and ready to take action in the clean up/reconstruction. I can't say the same for the likes of Pakistan or Brazil.
Your costs for food and fuel will go up a lot, just like ours did after the Mississippi flooding in '07-'08. At a time when food and fuel cost more to begin with. Won't you lose ~20% of your economy's income with coal mines being closed for months?
Will your government subsidize certain things during the clean-up and reconstruction?
^^Definitely, prices will go up. From the little I've heard on TV lately, politicians and the likes expect the economy to suffer, but hopefully it won't be that bad. As for subsidising, I heard somewhere that the QLD government will provide a certain sum of money to all (or maybe just to extreme cases) people who had their property affected by the floods, although I'm not exactly sure. At least the donations are coming in steadily.
Sounds like the high water will hit every "down stream" community. The pictures are incredible, so much devastation.
I've got to ask, how can your potable water and sewerage systems deal with all this? When the US gets that kind of flooding, our fresh water faucets and toilet-flushing stops working properly, along with our municipal electrical supply.
And what are your under-water hospitals and nursing homes doing in all this mess? How can patients be transferred and consolidated to higher ground, if the roads are washed away?
^^Well I know that there were great concerns over whether our drinking water would be affected, but as far as I know it wasn't (at least in my area). But the power was cut off in all the suburbs that were affected by the floods. A lot have it back now, but I know a few are still without. For example, last night I went into the CBD, and my bus route had to be diverted because apparently there were still some flood waters on the original path, but the high way that it ended up on was completely dark, all the lights were out, and the South Bank area (opposite the CBD) was completely dark, plus all the other inner city suburbs that you could see, and you saw nothing as the bus drove towards the CBD. Only specific parts of the CBD were lighted, and there weren't that many people, which was weird since it was a saturday night. I don't know abou the sewerage though, I haven't read anything about it.
A number of roads have been damaged beyond use in Brisbane, but the regional towns got hit more worse from what I know. And a lot of them were evacuated in time. I haven't heard anything about having to transfer patients over damaged roads, but I'm assuming it would be done with helicopters or boats even.
Actually I came across an interesting article about how the floods will impact the local economy, and it doesn't look good at all
And the article continues, here. Damn though, I didn't realise how much of a 'domino effect' it would have, from Coal mines to tourism, to fertilisers.Australia's mining industry has borne the brunt of the economic impact from massive floods in Queensland state, but agriculture, construction, transport, tourism and retail have also been hit.
Following is a list of sectors and companies affected:
Coal miners:
Some of the biggest producers have suspended sales contracts and production runs until waters recede.
- Anglo American , Aquila Resources , Vale , Macarthur Coal , Rio Tinto , Wesfarmers and Xstrata own mines in Queensland which are either fully or partially under force majeure, which releases them from supply obligations. - BHP Billiton declines to disclose how much capacity is subject to force majeure. BHP has a joint venture with Japan's Mitsubishi Development.
...
Well, if 20% of your economy is from exporting coal from Queensland, and the coal mines are flooded.....and crop fields have been drowned, any type of grain, including vineyards and wine exports are probably a loss....as well as herds for mutton or wool....and your sea ports are struggling along with intra-national logistics.....yeah, that's a huge domino effect. Both for getting things to your citizens, as well as exporting and importing goods for national commerce. Your infrastructure and transportation is all buggered up!
Not to mention that a chunk of your tourism is fubar now, with people canceling vacation cruises or air flights.
I still don't understand how you're getting fresh drinking water, or able to take care of sewerage.
^^QLD is usually a prime tourist destination for Australians from other states, but not now.
I did hear some news reports about some places being told that they may have to boil their water, but I don't think it happened.
This article talks about how in some regions they were being advised to boil water and how helicopters and water tankers were supplying it to those who needed it the most. Mentions how tapwater could be discoloured in the Brisbane area, but that's happened before during a rainy season with no problems. Even showered with it a number of times too :/
Ah, you have desalinization plants!
The Gold Coast desalination plant is also now running at 100 per cent to supplement the region's drinking water supply and to ensure water quality remains high.
"The desal plant is doing exactly what it was designed to do and is proving to be an extremely valuable asset for water quality and water security, Mr Robertson said.
There are now floods developing in Victoria. Some sources are saying they could be the worst since records began 200 years ago...hmmm
^^I heard about that, scary stuff
Found a new batch of before and after picture-slides from the Brisbane area though: http://www.abc.net.au/news/infograph...eforeafter.htm
Horsham seems to face major floods. I once spend a day there on my way from Adelaide to Melbourne, hopefully everyone is ok down there.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
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