Worst. Week. Ever

by Bec 4:10 PM 39 comments Flood nasty thanks

I just wanted to do a post to let you guys know what is happening. I haven't posted for over a week now and I do have a very good reason for it. I live in Brisbane, which is the capital city of Queensland, Australia. In the last month or so, we have been copping torrential rains and most of northern Queensland is now flooded. I had been watching the television coverage thinking that it was horrible for the residents of towns like Rockhampton and the surrounding areas but also secretly glad that things like that never happen where I am. How wrong I was.

At the start of this week, flash flooding hit a town only a few hours away from Brisbane called Toowoomba. Toowoomba is a huge place and the wave of water that hit it suddenly and unexpectedly was described by locals as an inland Tsunami which went straight through the city centre and continued on to wreak havoc in Grantham in the Lockyer Valley which seems to have copped the worst of it.


Just some of the damage done in Grantham

Heaps of people died, some stuck in their cars, house and some while trying to save others. We still don't know the official death count because they haven't found all the bodies yet. One body was found 80kms from where he was taken by the flood. You want to see what that kind of water can do? Check out the video below. It shows slightly before, the water peaking and then the after mass.

I heard this and still couldn't comprehend what I was hearing. Then the flooding hit the second biggest town, Ipswich. Which is only about an hour from the CBD. At least the residents of Ipswich had more warning and had time to evacuate their homes as the local Bremer River rose.

The Bremer River feeds into the Brisbane River which is the lifeline of our city. All of our infrastructure is built around it and our city is beautiful. Or at least it was. Brisbane is affectionately known as "the River City", only in these last few days it has been more true then ever.

  

This is a view of the CBD from Kangaroo Point. The greenery in the left is the botanical gardens, in the centre - just to the right of the tallest bulding is the Eagle Street Pier in happier times.



An aerial view of Brisbane before the flood. I've highlighted areas hit worst in the flooding.



An aerial shot taken after the flooding. You can see how swollen the river is compared to the first aerial shot. You can also see in between the trees in the botanical gardens how it is completely underwater. On the left side of the shot is Southbank underwater.

The water came with a vengeance, wiping out all of the low lying suburbs along the river banks along the way. Houses have been submerged up and even over their roofs. The Brisbane River was rushing through our town with a ferocity never before witnessed. It took boats, pontoons and even a floating restaurant with it. And smashed it into smithereens.

If you've ever been to Brisbane, there is a high chance you've been here - Southbank. Our oasis in the city.



This is what Southbank looks like now. That small brown arc like bit directly across from where the Botanical Gardens meet the CBD buildings is where the beach used to be. 

To give you an idea of the power this river had with its rushing water, it ripped a floating cement walkway that was about the length of a football field from its moorings and took it down the river. There were fears that it was going to take out one of the supports of the Gateway Bridge which is one of the only roads connecting the two sides of the river that remained open. 

To compound this, on Thursday we had a king tide come in. This meant that even more homes and now the actual CBD itself was flooding. 



CBD Before



CBD after from a slightly different angle, but that is the same shiny, shiny building. Oh and that building in the middle? That's where I work.

 

Brisbane CBD and Eagle Street Pier Before



Eagle Street Pier Before



Eagle Street Pier After



This is the inner city suburb of Auchenflower where houses cost more then most people earn in a lifetime, many of which will now need to be demolished.

So many suburbs along the river have just been washed away.

On Tuesday morning I woke up and found myself blocked in from the rains that had caused minor flooding on the roads around me and I called in to work to let them know I would not be able to make it. How grateful I now am for those roads being flooded in. If I had gone to work, I would have been evacuated along with the thousands and thousands of other people who work in the city at lunch time. I would have gotten back to the train station where I normally park my car to find it underwater and the entrance to the car park reminiscent of white water rapids. There is a river nearby which had risen to such an extent that it had taken out a fair few suburbs around it. There was absolute madness everywhere.

This is the flooding at Youngs Crossing at Petrie which is 2 suburbs away from my house.



Petrie Train Station where I catch my train to work. Good thing I couldn't get to work on this day!




And this. This is the entry to the carpark were I leave my car when I am a work.

I went to the supermarket to stock up on essentials and I waited nearly 1 and a half hours in line. The shelves had been stripped bare by panicked residents, and it was at that point I realised that this was real and so close.

I got home and got a call from my housemate who worked over the other side of Strathpine which had been evacuated due to mass flooding. Strathpine is only about a 10-15m drive from my place. It took my housemate 3 hours to get home. During that time, I freaked out massively thinking that I was going to be stranded in my house on my own. My main concern was the creek across the road from our house that was already swollen. However, we were lucky and managed to avoid major catastrophe.

Right now I am at my parents house on the south side of Brisbane. Today was the first real opportunity that anyone has had to get through and the traffic was chaos.

The water has started to recede, but it leaves behind a trail of destruction of epic proportions. It is the middle of summer here and we are told to brace for more rain. Our dams are at about 180% capacity which means they will have to release them again soon so that this can't happen again. Which means more swollen rivers, more dangerously fast currents, more general chaos, madness and destruction. The heat will only make things worse as the stench starts to set in. Where the water has gone down, it has left behind up to 3 inches of mud-like sludge which is made up of God only knows what. We have a hell of a clean up ahead of us and that is just the beginning.

To give you guys some idea of what we are dealing with, 75% of Queensland has been declared a natural disaster area. Queensland is also the largest supplier of fruit, vegetables and meat in the country and all of those crops and much of the livestock have been taken out by these floods.

I believe I saw a stat earlier on that the destruction Hurricane Katrina left behind in New Orleans a few years back was around 240,000 square kms. The area in Queensland? Over 1,000,000km square. And that was before it hit Toowomba, Ipswich, the CBD of Brisbane and started making its way down through NSW.

To those of you who have been checking on me from all over the world, thank you. It makes my faith in people stronger that complete strangers have been taking the time to think about me.

To the few of you who have sent me increasingly aggressive emails about why I have not been blogging and how I will lose my readers - screw you and get a life. I don't care for people like you and don't really care whether you come back or not.

To everyone who has been affected by these floods now, or will be affected in the coming few weeks as they make their way down the east side of Australia through New South Wales and Victoria, my thoughts are with you.

I will attempt to get back to regular posting as soon as I can.



I don't need to tell you guys to be awesome to each other - because so many of you have proved to be that you already are.

Bec