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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."
The Queensland Government has set up a disaster relief fund for donations
http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html
Please Give.
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home!
This BBC video link shows how fast the flooding is - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12161502
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
I was stationed in Biloxi, MS during Katrina and the comm there was terrible. Of course the first thing to go were the phone switches, which made everyone else panic... Funny thing is we had internet the whole time. I think today with the advances in smartphones, the lack of a phone wouldn't have been a huge issue if we could have kept a wi-fi signal up. Good thinking from the Aussies...
The Copper Tribe - Office Software Solutions
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)
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.
Hell, that's Melbourne weather at ANY time during the summer.
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.
Actually, the worst (best) typo I've ever seen was someone giving a link to the Symbian website (www.symbian.com), but they forgot the m (www.sybian.com).
1 Metric Fuckton = 1 Imperial Fuckload.
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.
Yeah unfortunately, although I'm Australian and we definitely have extremes in this country, the US midwest has us beat in any "rapid weather change" contest, by a long long way. The extremes in Australia can be just as extreme in magnitude ... but they don't ~change~ as quickly as in North America.
Australia is comparatively insulated from sharply contrasting airmasses meeting each other because we are an island, and there is nothing but ocean between us and the Antarctic. So polar airmasses making their way from the Antarctic up to Australia are considerably moderated and warmed by the ocean before they get to us. Contrast America which has solid land all the way up to the arctic, which doesn't provide much warming (especially when snowcovered in winter) and thus allows airmasses to remain colder for longer as they penetrate southwards. So you can see day by day temperature fluctuations in America that are significantly more severe than in Australia.
Not if you compare to about anywhere in the USA outside of Al Gore's office. We get that reputation from a few loonies in an protectionist Agrarian Socialist party that was so low on members it has ended up attempting to merge with a city based conservative party with a heavy emphasis on uncontrolled free market capitalism. I don't think they'll be doing much more than infighting for a very long time.
Coal, sugar, beef, bananas and pineapples is about all we produce and coal is where the majority of the money is. The coal industry really pays most of the taxes. Thus the government while not denying climate change is stuck in the position where they are addicted to taxes on coal and don't want to do anything to lose that money. Most of the coal actually burnt in the state goes into the state government owned power stations so a tax on consumed carbon becomes the silly situation of a government putting a new tax on itself. It's a tiger by the tail. The only alternatives for government at the moment are flat out batshit insane climate deniers within the group I mentioned about that is too busy with it's own infighting over opposed ideologies to do anything constructive.
Anyway, the street is starting to fill up with water and high tide is still an hour away so it's time to move the car unless I want to risk it bumping against the floorboards.
Try and understand the scale of what you're saying. People in Brisbane aren't building below sea level, they aren't building straw houses in hurricane territory. The freaky flooding that occurs no one could have predicted. Have a look at the warning. Now note that the low lying areas of Brisbane which were evacuated were done so as a precaution due to a flood level of a few meters. This impacts only a few minor riverside premises. The Wivenhoe dam was built to protect us and it has done a wonderful job.
Now have a look at Ipswich. The flood gauge is expected to peak at 20meters. Let me repeat that for you. The river is expected to be TWENTY METRES higher than it's normal level. So tell me where do you think it is safe to build? How high / far away from a river?
I know lets build in Toowoomba, a town that until yesterday was on level 5 water restrictions (120L per person per day, no watering of gardens, no washing of cars). A town that is built near the great dividng range, a mountainous area way above sea level, and is nowhere near a major river. Today it's totalled.
This isn't a case of stupid town planning. It's a natural disaster, unprecedented even in our flood prone history.