Aussie City Braces For Worst Flood In 118 Years

aesoteric writes "As parts of the Australian state of Queensland either experience or prepare for the worst floods to ravage the state in over 100 years, Australia's techies have taken it upon themselves to keep communications services on as the crisis unfolds. One man is mirroring flood information from a faltering Brisbane City Council website, and others have opened WiFi channels in their neighbourhood whilst mobile signal gets choked. But there is major damage to telco networks — at least one major fibre link has been severed by flood waters, telephone exchanges have been knocked offline and cell towers put on battery or generator back-up (or offline altogether). On a sombre note, the floods have claimed 10 lives, including children, and 78 people are still missing after facing a torrent of water up to 8 metres (26 feet) high."

Comments

Please Donate

[H0D_G]

The Queensland Government has set up a disaster relief fund for donations

http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html

Please Give.

Re:Please Donate

[Pojut]

I'm doing my part!

But no, seriously...I donated $15. Do it, people...what's going on down there is affecting everyone. I know that seems like an obvious thing to say, but it's true: no one is being spared from this disaster. "If we all do a little, we all do a lot."

Re:Please Donate

[timholman]

I think a donation to rebuilding flooded areas in Pakistan would achieve more.

A donation to rebuild flooded areas in Pakistan will almost certainly wind up in the pockets of a corrupt government official or anti-Western mullah.

Australia may be a wealthy country in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn't mean that individuals affected by the flooding can't use some additional help. And unlike Pakistan, your donation to Australian flood relief has an infinitely greater chance of actually making to the people affected by the disaster.

Re:Please Donate

[1u3hr]

Australia and especially conservative Queenslanders are amongst the staunchest climate change denialists

You can find plenty of idiots in Australia, as you can everywhere, but to blandly declare that Australians as a whole believe that is bullshit. And no, the couple of quotes you gave are just anecdotal and opinions. Of course, the coal industry exerts immense pressure. And governments give way to that. As they do everywhere.

The Wikileak story you link to is about how the USA blackmailed other countries into watering down Copenhagen. Yet this is somehow proof of "Australian complacency"?.

Re:Please Donate

[AlecC]

Regrettably, I have seen factual reports from a fairly reliable source (The Economist) that exactly what GP said is happening, A lot of flood relief money is sticking to fingers or being routed to the preferted groups rather than the needy groups.

It may or may not be racist, but Pakistan has a pretty corrupt administration. The President used to be known as "Mr 10%", and many accusations of corruption have been made against him. He asserts, possibly correctly, that the accusations were political; on the other hand, it may be that his non-prosecution is political. Whichever way it is, it is an atmosphere in which heavyweight accusations of corruption are not enough to block a political career.

It's Fast

[Mike Mentalist]

This BBC video link shows how fast the flooding is - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12161502

Re:It's Fast

[Anonymous Coward]

This BBC video link shows how fast the flooding is - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12161502

The "original" is perhaps on the ABC website

More disturbing is the amount of water that went through the town of Grantham

Remember when you're reading this...

[definate]

Remember when you're reading this that it's currently summer down here.

In the region (Brisband) the average temperature for this month is around 27 degrees celsius (80 degrees fahrenheit) and average rainfall is around 100 milliliters for the month (6.1 cubic inches).

In fact, the entire country has had an extremely wet summer, and an extremely dry winter for the last year or two.

If you want to feel the effects of climate instability, you just gotta come down here, where it's sunny and 36 degrees celsius (96 degrees fahrenheit) one day and raining and 22 degrees celsius (71 degrees fahrenheit) the next.

It's been fucking insane.

Re:Remember when you're reading this...

[Cimexus]

Small correction ... rainfall is measured as a 'depth', not a 'volume'. So *millimetres* is the unit you are looking for. Average rainfall of 100 mm equates to around 4 inches.

To put the rainfall SE Queensland has had in perspective, virtually all weather stations in the Wivenhoe catchment have recorded between 400-700 mm of rain in the last ~three days~. Some spots even higher (Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland has 740 mm / 29 inches of rain over the last three days - that is a metric f**kton of rainfall in any language)

Re:Remember when you're reading this...

[highways]

A little more than two years ago, we were worried whether our dams would run out - you can see some pretty graphs here.

Disturbingly, when the dam was finally full again after 8 years of drought in October, the state opposition leader John-Paul Langbroek called to increase the water storage level at the expense of flood mitigation. The main dam (Wivenhoe Dam) can hold 225% of it's nominal capacity for flood storage. It's currently at 190%.

The dam is a earth embankment dam and is not design to spill. If so, it may erode the dam and potentially cause it's failure. Hence, there must be a controlled release, even while the flood conditions are occuring and it's a fine balancing act between holding back more rain and flooding downstream.

In general, it is considered that the flood mitigation capacity (about that of Sydney Harbour) will knock about 2m off a flood peak. There would be many more people currently swimming without it, even before it's expected to peak in about 36 hours.

Re:Sigh...

[Cimexus]

The people in Brisbane know full well that certain areas are flood prone, especially those that lived through the 1974 floods. Seems that the current flooding is probably a 1-in-100-year kinda event so they got a bit unlucky. But everyone in these areas in Brisbane knows and accepts the risk.

As for the flash flooding in Toowoomba, well that's a different story. I find it hard to fault their choice of where to live. Far from being a flood plain, Toowoomba is on the top of a freaking plateau 700 metres above sea level, and nothing even remotely like this has happened in its recorded history. A freak event, and very sad.

Flooding is the worst

[MetricT]

Having endured a 1000 year flood in Tennessee last year, flooding of this level is destructive in ways unimaginable to those who haven't experienced it. In one day the Cumberland River turned into something resembling a white-water Mississippi River. Many had to be plucked from their homes via helicopter, and hundreds of homes and businesses were reduced to rubble. It crippled the local economy for months. In sheer destructiveness it exceeds an earthquake or hurricane, though mercifully limited in geographic extent. My deepest sympathies to anyone who has to go through something like that.

Re:Completely wrong impression

[totally bogus dude]

This page lists major donors to the state Government's flood relief appeal. There are some resources amongst the list.