Roger Henry is thankfully out of the worst of the flooded area, but he’s been sending updates:

Most of the “Southbank” recreation area has been inundated, including the ‘beach’. Shouldn’t be much of a recovery problem once the mud has been hosed off. Don’t know about the maritime museum. I imagine that the old graving dock would have flooded, but the last pictures I saw of the ship was that the bottom was sealed — maybe not sound, but it should resist a short immersion — and she was moored fore and aft. Thus I doubt if she has gone off.

The river ferries, cross-river and the cats were all moved down into Moreton Bay and secured in a marina somewhere. The pontoons, bridges, sheds etc, have been largely washed away and may take some time to replace. The Moggil vehicle ferry, a quite large vessel, was saved after a chopper was used to fly in an extra anchor. Otherwise, the military had orders to sink her.

Literally hundreds of small, and not so small, boats and pontoons washed down the river. One guy had his fore-sail up to try and get some steerage and was heading downstream at a fair clip. Don’t know how he fared, A large, floating restaurant was wrecked against a bridge piling.

A salvage firm has been doing a brisk business herding up all these wayward vessels and parking them where best they can.

Police have also caught a few thieves trying to do some ‘salvage’. One guy had winched a pontoon and speed boat on to a trailer when intercepted by the cops. They confiscated everything as ‘evidence’, gave him a summons and told him to walk home.

There has been some looting in Ipswich. The Mayor said that if they could find a lamppost that wasn’t submerged it should be put to its alternative use. Alternatively, if someone caught a looter and tied them to a tree as a flood gauge then he, the Mayor, wouldn’t be fussed.

Don’t know about the rail museum. The flood height was about three feet lower than estimated so it may have been spared. The local station had at least four foot of water in it. The platforms were covered.

The situation remains dire and there have been a couple more drownings. Otherwise it is now a waiting game. Went shopping today. A few empty shelves in the supermarket but still plenty of essentials. Stocked up on a few necessarys. Traffic was a bit thin and the nearby freeway sounded very quiet. Plenty of cars moving around but not many trucks. About one third of the small merchants in the shopping mall were closed. Probably couldn’t get their staff in.

Interesting pictures of our previous Prime Minister walking around the streets of his neighbourhoood. Up to his knees in flood water and helping people move. He was still at it after the cameras left. Very democratic.

And a further update about eight hours later:

Water levels, though high, are dropping and the weather remains fine. A clean-up plan is afoot, to start at first light tomorrow and proceed progressively until the water is out of the city. This just gets roads, power, phones etc. back on line. Individual houses and businesses will be addressed as time goes by. It all sound sensible and is really the outcome of some long considered disaster recovery planning.

I did go to another supermarket this afternoon. One would think that looters had been in. No bottled water, milk, eggs, bread, long-life milk and coffee mate, toilet paper or veges. Plenty of soft-drinks, frozen foods, meat,. Ice creams deli lines etc. All of which require refrigeration. There is now very little chance of further power cuts. It all seems a bit odd as supply routes are now re-opening and, for those not directly flooded, there is almost no need to hoard supplies.

Some of the towns and villages in the far west parts of the state are having problems both with supplies and the risk of more severe flooding. Some towns for the second or third time in almost as many weeks.

Some 62 suburbs are affected. Bulimba, which has some low-lying parts is largely underwater. TV has been showing extensive footage of the Brisbane area and there is no doubt some/many very sad stories. The most dramatic area is an agricultural valley about 70 miles to the west that was hit by very fast flash-floods. This is where most of the spectacular devastation occurred and where most of the deaths happened. There is now some 18 dead and 70+ almost certainly dead. Army, police and volunteers are searching about 200 miles of creeks and fields looking for the missing. Also the place where most of the terrifying personal stories are coming to light.

So, as a disaster, it has been awful for very many people, but I remain personally unaffected. That also feels quite odd. It is like there had been a tornado that flattened one side of town but left yours untouched.

Not the end times. Part of living near the tropics. Although the weather for the next week or so should be kind, there are two cyclones forming up in the Coral Sea and one of them is well placed to swing in to the coast and gives us a real pasting before the end of the month. Or it might drift over to New Zealand 🙂

Heather Brown goes back into flood-ravaged Toowoomba:

Early yesterday morning I went back to the bruised and battered Margaret Street to support any local business that still had the heart to open. My coffee shop was handing out free coffees to the battered owners of the local businesses who had lost so much. When I went to buy my newspaper, the newsagent told me he was devastated, not because of what had happened but because the engineer who had worked on the beautification project told him he couldn’t make them listen when he pleaded for bigger pipes — “18-footers” he called them — to let the water through, because it simply didn’t suit the aesthetics of the architects and landscapers.

So that’s what happened to my city, folks, the same as happened to so much of flooded Queensland. We did stupid and really, really dumb things because we thought we could get away with them. We built the wrong sort of houses and the wrong sort of bridges. We built towns and suburbs on flood plains. And we ignored at our peril the forces of nature and the history of the great floods that have shaped this continent for thousands of years.

In our arrogance, we created towns and cities better suited to the whims of bean-counters and city-bound architects than the natural lie of the land. And for 20 years we cheerfully welcomed new settlers to Queensland with a “beautiful one day, perfect the next”.

We didn’t tell them what this place was really like when it rained. And we were wrong.

H/T to Roger Henry for the link.