Australian Floods - Never park next to the river

[jonnylarge]

Apologies if a repost, but here's some pretty dramatic footage of the floods in Australia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYUpkPTcqPY

[Laurel Green]

Surprised at how quickly those waters rose and, the power thus delivered. Frightening to say the least!

[Tsippy]

It's incredible to see the cars tossed around like a piece of plastic, I think many people do not appreciate the power of nature until they see videos like this.

[hornetrider]

Just saw this on the BBC website, that is insane. That Patrol(?) driver was lucky to get away in time!

[anonymous-user]

Are these floods worse than the floods in the '70s? Brisbane seems to be taking a battering now.

[GTIR]

The main side walk just collapsed into the river.

It's slightly below the estimated max height but is still expected to peak in about 1 hour. An extra fifteen thousand houses are expected to be flooded (currently 35,000), not including commercial property. Power is off, water in scarce supply. (Listening to B105 Brizzy radio.


Interesting to see how fast things get back to normal compared to the USA disaster.

[anonymous-user]

el stovey said:

Are these floods worse than the floods in the '70s? Brisbane seems to be taking a battering now.

The problem they said was that development has been massive since then so many more people/buildings etc to get affected.

[seefarr]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Actually they're now saying it won't go as high as '74. They should hit the peak by 6pm GMT.

http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDQ20805...

Interestingly though, if this graph hits 4 meters, I've lost my house:

http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDQ65389/IDQ65389.540132...

[jesta1865]

the daughter and her BF fly out on 2nd Feb to see his mum and dad who live out there, they had the water up to their thighs at the end of the drive, luckly it never quite made the house (on supports) and seems to have stopped about 6" under it.

we have spoken to them on the phone the other day and the thunder was so load we had to wait while it tailed off for us to hear them, but they are ok.

however some of their neighbours haven't been so lucky, the house opposite down the slope went under, and one if the sons friends has disappeared with all his family.

[GTIR]

jonnylarge said:

Apologies if a repost, but here's some pretty dramatic footage of the floods in Australia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYUpkPTcqPY

"The handbrake is on" stopping it moving in the flood!
Silly bint.

[Tsippy]

garyhun said:

el stovey said:

Are these floods worse than the floods in the '70s? Brisbane seems to be taking a battering now.

The problem they said was that development has been massive since then so many more people/buildings etc to get affected.

I wonder how that has altered the natural runoff for rain water? Of course this flooding is terrible and would displace people anyway, but how much of a factor were the new buildings?

Edited by Tsippy on Wednesday 12th January 17:10

[Arnold The Bat]

The real piss boiler is that these floods have been avoided if it wasn't for those pesky ecoloons.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/...

[boredofmyoldname]

Listening to R4 at lunchtime they had some locals talking about the floods, one guys take on it was

'Well, the house is full of water! So all we can do is sit out here and have a couple of beers!'

You have to love any nations people who just say sod it lets get pissed.

[anonymous-user]

Somehow, I find it much more shocking seeing somewhere like Australia being flooded than I do when seeing floods in China or Bangladesh or some other third world country.

I'm not sure if that's racist or just that I can relate to the damage more. It certainly gets much more coverage than similar events do in poorer countries.

[randomwalk]

Since the 70s they have done quite a bit of flood mitigation work around Brisbane, I thought there was a big dam that was meant to help however its probably full now.

[NDA]

jesta1865 said:

however some of their neighbours haven't been so lucky, the house opposite down the slope went under, and one if the sons friends has disappeared with all his family.

The loss of life is such a tragedy - when you hear of someone's missing kid it really brings it home. Shocking stuff.

[Globs]

randomwalk said:

Since the 70s they have done quite a bit of flood mitigation work around Brisbane, I thought there was a big dam that was meant to help however its probably full now.

I think it was full before, which was the problem..

Those warmers said it wouldn't rain, so they were stockpiling the water. The reservoirs should have been left at 60% full, not 90-100%.

[caziques]

el stovey said:

Somehow, I find it much more shocking seeing somewhere like Australia being flooded than I do when seeing floods in China or Bangladesh or some other third world country.

I'm not sure if that's racist or just that I can relate to the damage more. It certainly gets much more coverage than similar events do in poorer countries.

The Queensland floods are big news here in NZ, daughter's boyfriend is originally from Toowoomba and he's just had to fly back to Brisbane to start work again after the summer break - so yes it does affect you more as Australia is much more "English".

There are also bad floods in Rio de Janeiro - more loss of life than Oz.

[Laurel Green]

caziques said:

There are also bad floods in Rio de Janeiro - more loss of life than Oz.

Also in Sri Lanka. Clicky.

[s3fella]

I wonder how many low on work British Builders will be putting in a Visa request to Oz now?

Sort of difficult to see how they ever start clearing up from this sort of thing.