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Well the worst is now over and it’s now time for Brisbane to start cleaning up the areas affected by the floods. I’ve registered as a volunteer but have been told by a few sources that there have been so many volunteers there may not be enough work to delegate to everyone. I can’t even imagine that, too many volunteers? That’s just fantastic and I send hi-5′s to all thsoe who have donated their time and energy to getting Brisbane back to normal. I’m hoping I can go help out my friends who were affected tomorrow.
I have to admit I have been a bit disappointed in how little attention this has been given from people in other parts of Australia and the world. I wasn’t expecting everyone in the world to collapse to the ground yelling “WHY???” to the sky and donating all of their saving to the disaster relief fund. But I kind of expected a little more attention than what I’ve seen mentioned online. Of all of the blogs I read every day, only one mentioned the floods at all (Gala Darling, and she’s a kiwi living in NY) while everyone else has seemingly ignored the matter. Is it because there wasn’t a significant loss of life? Because Queenslanders have the “it’ll be alright” kind of attitude so people don’t realise how big a disaster it was? Or is this how it always is, and I’m only noticing because I saw the impact these floods had first hand? I don’t recall how much attention the fires in Victoria got in 2009 as I didn’t read a lot of blogs or use Twitter back then. And come to think of it, I’m not sure how much attention Haiti got during it’s earthquake disaster last year and I’m wondering if it was also largely ignored by bloggers and non-affected people like I feel the Brisbane floods have been. Not to say people don’t care about them of course. I just don’t know why it’s not being mentioned more to raise awareness, particularly by people other Aussies.
I guess all I’m saying is, if you know someone who may have been affected the the brisbane floods, make sure you contact them and find out if they are OK. And if you have a blog that has a significant number of readers, let them know what’s going on and encourage them to make a donation if they can. It won’t turn people off and it’s only going to do good, so start making some sort of fuss. We got smashed pretty badly and it’s going to take a lot of money and time to get things back to normal and every cent will help. Plus the floods are continuing around the country and things may only get worse still.
OK, that’s my rant for the day. If you want to get a good perspective of how Queensland has been affected, check out these great interactive before/after photos as well as the gallery on news.com.au. Please note my mum lives in Ipswich so those first few photos in the gallery are pretty shocking for me. Thank god my mum lives on a hill, as many of her neighbors (many elderly) lost everything.
Originally published at rubyvelour.com