All you need to know about the floods of last year, my non-QLD Australian friends
QUICK NOTE: I STARTED THIS FOREVER AGO AND COULDN'T FINISH IT BECAUSE OF MY OWN CYCLONE PROBLEMS. AKA NO POWER FOR AGES AND THEN HAVING TO DO CYCLONE CLEAN UP.
BUT THIS IS A PRETTY LONG FUCKING ESSAY BESIDES.
I am going to post about something that is VERY EFFING IMPORTANT - the floods in Australia, especially since we currently have cyclones bearing down on us and are likely to experience even more destruction. Scratch that, the power went off in the middle of writing this, and now Cyclone Yasi is post. HOWEVER it is not over yet. I am going to talk specifically about my hometown in relation to the cyclone season, as well as how the surrounding areas were affected throughout 2010 and the ramifications of that on the flooding everywhere else.
Also, I want to express how my government is full of incompetent morons. They could have done so. much. more to help those that were in the flood affected areas of Brisbane, but they didn’t because they are stupid politicians that don’t know the first thing about practicalities.
Before you can understand the unique nature of the floods in the south of Queensland (that then bleed into New South Wales and now Victoria), we need to back up until September 2010. And include a little history on North Queensland’s wet season.
It started raining in my hometown around September. Note that our wet season does not ever, EVER start in September. The wet season is around December to March, depending on the year and whether or not we are in La Nina/El Nino. For the past ten years we have been in a drought. This has been brought on by an excessive El Nino period. What is supposed to happen, in the regular cycle of events, Australia gets three (3) years of El Nino aka drought while South America is flooding with La Nina. Then it switches around and we have three (3) years of La Nina flooding while South America experiences El Nino drought. We’ll expand on the importance of this a bit later, but for the mean time know that Australia has been suffering from extreme lack of water. Our annual rainfall went from 40inches to 20inces in those ten years. The wet season shortened to December - February. When we would get rain it would come in such a short period that the land couldn’t handle it and it would cause massive flooding, but within a day the water would have soaked into the soil and barely leave a trace that there was ever a downpour.
Also note that every year, without fail, cyclones develop off the coast of North Queensland. Every year like clockwork, just as the Typhoon’s do in Japan and in the exact same way as America has to suffer its Hurricane season - Australia has cyclones. They can only develop in very particular conditions, which are rife during the months of December - March. It’s when most of the north of the country gets its yearly rainfall, because all other times of the year Queensland has more sun than it could possibly ever need. The pattern here is that cyclone = water = storm season, and it has been that way for as long as anyone can remember.
The problem, of course, is when we start having rain outside this wet season. As I mentioned earlier - my hometown experienced its wettest year on record BEFORE the wet season had even started. There wasn’t much flooding, thankfully, just a lot of rain that caused an enormous amount of inconvenience to everyone. And it destroyed crops. That’s where the big issues lie - almost all of the crops throughout Queensland have died in the last few months. Most of North Queensland has been under water since September, and back in November most of the north had already lost all their crops. They had rotted from too much water, had wilted from lack of sunlight, or been unable to be harvested due to the wet ground. This was the problem for my brother. He is a sugar cane farmer and he was only able to harvest 60-70% of this year’s crop. That cost him several acres in crop yield and tens of thousands of dollars. This loss goes for most of the sugar cane farmers in Queensland. The good thing about sugar cane though - so long as things don’t get too bad, it will keep for another year. It may not be the best harvest, but something may be saveable. No other crops grown in this area can do that. The farmers weren’t the only one suffering - the mines have been having problems with the sporadic rain as well. Not as much, but delays caused by the rain cost a lot of money. At this point though, they were still operational.
Take a second to note that at this point the State government could care less about North Queensland and the state of its crops and mines and flooding. Even though the rain was already causing such problems - and the wet season had not even started yet. Why didn’t anyone think to start preparing back then? It should have been obvious that more was to come. Proper measures should have been put into affect long before the Christmas Day floods devastated most of the state.
Then: December 3rd - the first instance of widespread flooding. Emerald was the first town to go underwater, where up to 300millilitres drowned the area overnight. That’s a foot of water falling onto dirt that has already been saturated by the wet weather. It blocked off all the roads leading out of the town, effectively isolating Emerald. But it wasn’t so bad that it stayed that way for long - the emergency crews got out there and did their job, fixed up the highway and reopened the roads.
At the same time as this, New South Wales was flooding. A large part of the west of the state had received an extreme amount of rain in a very short amount of time. Now let me just say that again - the west of the state. The part that is inland and right next to the desert. Australia’s geography is such that if there is ever rain - the coast gets all of it, and anyone inland gets anything that’s left over. But this time, inland got more rain than the coast did, and that in itself is a rarity. These are the communities that were affected the worst by the droughts of the last ten years - so many farmers lost everything and so they are in no shape to deal with flooding on such a large scale. It is more than slightly soul-destroying for these people that have battled drought for ten years, and now have to watch as they lose their crop to flooding. Yet this was only the beginning.
A week later, central Queensland was inundated again. This time though, it was more rain on top of an already flooded state, when showers continued to hamper recovery. On the 14th December, The Morning Bulletin posted an article about the extent of the damage to the cotton farms in the area - and that was just the damage to the crops. Mines had to close and roads blocked, causing delays in supplies up the coast. The death toll had risen to five at this point, with stories of some truly horrific deaths. I remember one woman tried to cross a swollen river in her car and it stalled. Due to the cars failed electronics, she was then unable to open the windows and drowned as her car filled with water.
Less than a week later, more rain was flooding the state - third time in less than a month. By this point supplies were extremely scarce in the northernmost parts of the state. Food had to be flown into Cairns because few trucks had been able to deliver in weeks. Transportation was becoming an issue because people need to get the hell out of their flood-isolated town. Some of these people needed to go to Brisbane for medical operations. Many people needed to get out for work reasons, because you can’t put food on the table if you don’t work. And this was back when the federal and state government weren’t handing out money to “all those devastated by the flooding”. After all, it’s only a couple of rural towns up in no man’s land, it’s not like we matter to the government. Several local councils though set up a ferry system to help get those that wanted out, out. This included those that were leaving to go to relatives for Christmas.
In these floods, towns as far away from the coast as Jericho were affected. Jericho is 500km from the coast. Remember what I said about the coast getting all the rainfall? Well ABC News Online has a really good Google Map of the areas affected, which gives a really good indication of the sheer scale of the flooding:
Then, Christmas Day arrives. Mother natures’ gift is a cyclone headed straight into Queensland. It was only a category 1 cyclone - a weak storm by anyone’s measures, but the damage was extensive and widespread. It crossed between Cairns and Innisfail (way up in the north) and places as far south as Brisbane were affected by the heavy rainfall from this cyclone. Brisbane to Port Douglas, just north of Cairns. That’s 1,700 kilometres of coastline affected by this single cyclone. That’s nearly the entire state of Queensland. To compare - that’s like saying Los Angeles to New Orleans was affected by a single storm. Look it up on Google Maps; it’s mind boggling.
The rain from this system continued to hammer Queensland for days on end. On December 28, a disaster zone is declared for several towns in southern Queensland. The SES (State Emergency Service) was working flat out trying to evacuate people and rescue them from their flooded homes, their cars that had been caught in rising creeks, rescued from where they clung to trees/roofs/boats for dear life. Two days later, Bundaberg is flooded - the swollen river splitting the city in two and causing extensive infrastructure damage. In the following days (Jan 1-3), Rockhampton evacuates on mass before it is hit by flooding caused by the inland deluge rushing toward the sea. The river running through Rockhampton peaked at 9.2 metres (30ft), causing more than 200 homes to go underwater. And after all that, Rockhampton’s recovery effort is hampered by the continuous heavy rain.
At the same time, 22 cities were considered to be in a ‘disaster flood zone’. Those 22 cities include all the ones I’ve mentioned above, all those on the Google Map image. This is when the international news was saying how the extent of the flooding in Queensland was equivalent to area of Germany and France combined. My Canadian friends said this to me in shock, and I looked back and went “… but of course.” QUEENSLAND IS A BIG STATE, ALRIGHT. It’s about the same size as Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Austria combined. The international press really didn’t do justice to the extent of the flooding and damage in Queensland AND New South Wales AND in the north of Western Australia. To put it bluntly, the country looked like this for most of the month of December:
What I mentioned at the beginning of the post about rain outside of the wet season is the reason these floods were so extensive and so devastating. These rains affected so much of the country. 2010 was Queensland’s wettest December and the third wettest year on record. 2010 was also Australia’s third wettest year on record, and just to show you what that looks like, here is the rainfall gauge from the Bureau of Meteorology.
Note that this is the first instance we see of any real military action to help with the rescue and assistance efforts. On the 31st December they stepped in to ‘lend a hand’ to those areas that were worst affected, and by the 2nd Jan were still providing food, supplies and relief to many of the flood-affected areas in central and southern Queensland. By “military assistance” it should be noted that less than 100 soldiers and a few helicopters/planes were commissioned for the flood efforts. Our Premier, Anna Bligh, announced she would be ‘visiting the area to assess the situation and discuss disaster relief efforts’. This is after nearly four straight weeks of rain and several floods throughout the state before she even decided to take an interest. I was disgusted to learn that she sat in her comfortable, dry seat in Parliament house while the entire fucking state has been under water for months and she only started to do something when shit got real. Fuck this bitch, I swear to god.
Of course, there was no relief. This was only the beginning of what would be the most terrifying time for most Queenslanders. Between the 5th and 9th January, many of the cities/towns that had already been flooded and evacuated (Chinchilla, Emerald, Bundaberg) were inundated with more rain and flooded again. Dozens of mines closed and Gladstone had to scale back its sea port (where a lot of the coal is exported from), which costs the country an astronomical amount in lost GDP. Not to mention the loss of pretty much all crops throughout Queensland and New South Wales. This caused a massive spike in prices across the country, because there is such a shortage of fresh fruit and veg right now. Livestock was not as badly affected, but farmers were still affected.
On the 10th January Toowoomba is hit by massive flash floods when 60 mm (2.36 inches) fell in an hour. In total they had 160mm in less than two days. Normally, this wouldn’t have done anything. But in an area that is already saturated, the water rushed into the river and then downstream. People were caught in the flash flooding as they left work for the day, with no way to know the severity of the flooding. My co-worker has a friend that was the third car to cross a bridge in Toowoomba and while he was crossing the bridge, 2 metres (7feet) of water smashed into the bridge and took the first two cars that were on the bridge - literally right in front of his eyes. Cars were washed away and people had to wait on their roofs to be rescued. The most heartbreaking story I heard was the one about a a little 13yr boy who gave his life so that SES could rescue his little brother instead. The immediately known death toll was 8, with 70 missing, and the photos and videos displayed all over the news were truly horrifying.
Now the water had to continue downstream. Unfortunately, the flooding control dam Wivenhoe had filled to about 175%. This dam had the equivalent of TWO Sydney Harbour - a million megalitres - flowing into it that day, which is more than half of its full capacity. The dam can hold 225% of its capacity, but if it were to hit that mark and then keep filling, it would disintegrate and the dam would burst. Just imagining the thought is terrifying. And so the government made the decision to open the floodgates to release water from the dam. The dam was at 191% capacity and they had opened an emergency spillway just in case it happened to reach full capacity. Even with all five floodgates open and water pouring out of the dam, at the peak of the floods the water was only 60 centimetres (24in) below the spillway. That’s cutting it awfully fucking close.
All this water had to go somewhere. And that was downstream to Brisbane. The silver lining to this disaster though, was that at least it didn’t happen in the middle of a cyclone. The last flood in 1974 was a result of the cyclone and so nobody had a chance in hell of saving anything. This time the residents had sunshine and perfect weather, and PLENTY of warning, so everyone should have been able to save everything valuable. And yet so many people lost so much. Because it wasn’t handled properly. the army, instead of waiting until after the disaster to come in and clean up, should have been out there with the people that will be in the flood affected areas, pulling furniture up onto roofs, transporting valuables to safe locations, creating levee banks to give the most vulnerable places a chance at surviving.
Of course, in the end, it amounted to not a whole lot. Brisbane is still recovering, though thankfully most of it is on the road to repair. There is so much more to post about - the TWO cyclones in less than three days that North Queensland dealt with, but this whole thing is just so depressing.
It’s not over yet, not until the wet season has finished, but for now at least the state and the people and the country are dealing with it and trying to just keep surviving. We’ve had more cyclone scares, but hopefully any that are predicted for the coming weeks don’t hit the coast, because I really don’t know how much more of a pounding we can take.
BUT THIS IS A PRETTY LONG FUCKING ESSAY BESIDES.
I am going to post about something that is VERY EFFING IMPORTANT - the floods in Australia, especially since we currently have cyclones bearing down on us and are likely to experience even more destruction. Scratch that, the power went off in the middle of writing this, and now Cyclone Yasi is post. HOWEVER it is not over yet. I am going to talk specifically about my hometown in relation to the cyclone season, as well as how the surrounding areas were affected throughout 2010 and the ramifications of that on the flooding everywhere else.
Also, I want to express how my government is full of incompetent morons. They could have done so. much. more to help those that were in the flood affected areas of Brisbane, but they didn’t because they are stupid politicians that don’t know the first thing about practicalities.
Before you can understand the unique nature of the floods in the south of Queensland (that then bleed into New South Wales and now Victoria), we need to back up until September 2010. And include a little history on North Queensland’s wet season.
It started raining in my hometown around September. Note that our wet season does not ever, EVER start in September. The wet season is around December to March, depending on the year and whether or not we are in La Nina/El Nino. For the past ten years we have been in a drought. This has been brought on by an excessive El Nino period. What is supposed to happen, in the regular cycle of events, Australia gets three (3) years of El Nino aka drought while South America is flooding with La Nina. Then it switches around and we have three (3) years of La Nina flooding while South America experiences El Nino drought. We’ll expand on the importance of this a bit later, but for the mean time know that Australia has been suffering from extreme lack of water. Our annual rainfall went from 40inches to 20inces in those ten years. The wet season shortened to December - February. When we would get rain it would come in such a short period that the land couldn’t handle it and it would cause massive flooding, but within a day the water would have soaked into the soil and barely leave a trace that there was ever a downpour.
Also note that every year, without fail, cyclones develop off the coast of North Queensland. Every year like clockwork, just as the Typhoon’s do in Japan and in the exact same way as America has to suffer its Hurricane season - Australia has cyclones. They can only develop in very particular conditions, which are rife during the months of December - March. It’s when most of the north of the country gets its yearly rainfall, because all other times of the year Queensland has more sun than it could possibly ever need. The pattern here is that cyclone = water = storm season, and it has been that way for as long as anyone can remember.
The problem, of course, is when we start having rain outside this wet season. As I mentioned earlier - my hometown experienced its wettest year on record BEFORE the wet season had even started. There wasn’t much flooding, thankfully, just a lot of rain that caused an enormous amount of inconvenience to everyone. And it destroyed crops. That’s where the big issues lie - almost all of the crops throughout Queensland have died in the last few months. Most of North Queensland has been under water since September, and back in November most of the north had already lost all their crops. They had rotted from too much water, had wilted from lack of sunlight, or been unable to be harvested due to the wet ground. This was the problem for my brother. He is a sugar cane farmer and he was only able to harvest 60-70% of this year’s crop. That cost him several acres in crop yield and tens of thousands of dollars. This loss goes for most of the sugar cane farmers in Queensland. The good thing about sugar cane though - so long as things don’t get too bad, it will keep for another year. It may not be the best harvest, but something may be saveable. No other crops grown in this area can do that. The farmers weren’t the only one suffering - the mines have been having problems with the sporadic rain as well. Not as much, but delays caused by the rain cost a lot of money. At this point though, they were still operational.
Take a second to note that at this point the State government could care less about North Queensland and the state of its crops and mines and flooding. Even though the rain was already causing such problems - and the wet season had not even started yet. Why didn’t anyone think to start preparing back then? It should have been obvious that more was to come. Proper measures should have been put into affect long before the Christmas Day floods devastated most of the state.
Then: December 3rd - the first instance of widespread flooding. Emerald was the first town to go underwater, where up to 300millilitres drowned the area overnight. That’s a foot of water falling onto dirt that has already been saturated by the wet weather. It blocked off all the roads leading out of the town, effectively isolating Emerald. But it wasn’t so bad that it stayed that way for long - the emergency crews got out there and did their job, fixed up the highway and reopened the roads.
At the same time as this, New South Wales was flooding. A large part of the west of the state had received an extreme amount of rain in a very short amount of time. Now let me just say that again - the west of the state. The part that is inland and right next to the desert. Australia’s geography is such that if there is ever rain - the coast gets all of it, and anyone inland gets anything that’s left over. But this time, inland got more rain than the coast did, and that in itself is a rarity. These are the communities that were affected the worst by the droughts of the last ten years - so many farmers lost everything and so they are in no shape to deal with flooding on such a large scale. It is more than slightly soul-destroying for these people that have battled drought for ten years, and now have to watch as they lose their crop to flooding. Yet this was only the beginning.
A week later, central Queensland was inundated again. This time though, it was more rain on top of an already flooded state, when showers continued to hamper recovery. On the 14th December, The Morning Bulletin posted an article about the extent of the damage to the cotton farms in the area - and that was just the damage to the crops. Mines had to close and roads blocked, causing delays in supplies up the coast. The death toll had risen to five at this point, with stories of some truly horrific deaths. I remember one woman tried to cross a swollen river in her car and it stalled. Due to the cars failed electronics, she was then unable to open the windows and drowned as her car filled with water.
Less than a week later, more rain was flooding the state - third time in less than a month. By this point supplies were extremely scarce in the northernmost parts of the state. Food had to be flown into Cairns because few trucks had been able to deliver in weeks. Transportation was becoming an issue because people need to get the hell out of their flood-isolated town. Some of these people needed to go to Brisbane for medical operations. Many people needed to get out for work reasons, because you can’t put food on the table if you don’t work. And this was back when the federal and state government weren’t handing out money to “all those devastated by the flooding”. After all, it’s only a couple of rural towns up in no man’s land, it’s not like we matter to the government. Several local councils though set up a ferry system to help get those that wanted out, out. This included those that were leaving to go to relatives for Christmas.
In these floods, towns as far away from the coast as Jericho were affected. Jericho is 500km from the coast. Remember what I said about the coast getting all the rainfall? Well ABC News Online has a really good Google Map of the areas affected, which gives a really good indication of the sheer scale of the flooding:
Then, Christmas Day arrives. Mother natures’ gift is a cyclone headed straight into Queensland. It was only a category 1 cyclone - a weak storm by anyone’s measures, but the damage was extensive and widespread. It crossed between Cairns and Innisfail (way up in the north) and places as far south as Brisbane were affected by the heavy rainfall from this cyclone. Brisbane to Port Douglas, just north of Cairns. That’s 1,700 kilometres of coastline affected by this single cyclone. That’s nearly the entire state of Queensland. To compare - that’s like saying Los Angeles to New Orleans was affected by a single storm. Look it up on Google Maps; it’s mind boggling.
The rain from this system continued to hammer Queensland for days on end. On December 28, a disaster zone is declared for several towns in southern Queensland. The SES (State Emergency Service) was working flat out trying to evacuate people and rescue them from their flooded homes, their cars that had been caught in rising creeks, rescued from where they clung to trees/roofs/boats for dear life. Two days later, Bundaberg is flooded - the swollen river splitting the city in two and causing extensive infrastructure damage. In the following days (Jan 1-3), Rockhampton evacuates on mass before it is hit by flooding caused by the inland deluge rushing toward the sea. The river running through Rockhampton peaked at 9.2 metres (30ft), causing more than 200 homes to go underwater. And after all that, Rockhampton’s recovery effort is hampered by the continuous heavy rain.
At the same time, 22 cities were considered to be in a ‘disaster flood zone’. Those 22 cities include all the ones I’ve mentioned above, all those on the Google Map image. This is when the international news was saying how the extent of the flooding in Queensland was equivalent to area of Germany and France combined. My Canadian friends said this to me in shock, and I looked back and went “… but of course.” QUEENSLAND IS A BIG STATE, ALRIGHT. It’s about the same size as Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Austria combined. The international press really didn’t do justice to the extent of the flooding and damage in Queensland AND New South Wales AND in the north of Western Australia. To put it bluntly, the country looked like this for most of the month of December:
What I mentioned at the beginning of the post about rain outside of the wet season is the reason these floods were so extensive and so devastating. These rains affected so much of the country. 2010 was Queensland’s wettest December and the third wettest year on record. 2010 was also Australia’s third wettest year on record, and just to show you what that looks like, here is the rainfall gauge from the Bureau of Meteorology.
Note that this is the first instance we see of any real military action to help with the rescue and assistance efforts. On the 31st December they stepped in to ‘lend a hand’ to those areas that were worst affected, and by the 2nd Jan were still providing food, supplies and relief to many of the flood-affected areas in central and southern Queensland. By “military assistance” it should be noted that less than 100 soldiers and a few helicopters/planes were commissioned for the flood efforts. Our Premier, Anna Bligh, announced she would be ‘visiting the area to assess the situation and discuss disaster relief efforts’. This is after nearly four straight weeks of rain and several floods throughout the state before she even decided to take an interest. I was disgusted to learn that she sat in her comfortable, dry seat in Parliament house while the entire fucking state has been under water for months and she only started to do something when shit got real. Fuck this bitch, I swear to god.
Of course, there was no relief. This was only the beginning of what would be the most terrifying time for most Queenslanders. Between the 5th and 9th January, many of the cities/towns that had already been flooded and evacuated (Chinchilla, Emerald, Bundaberg) were inundated with more rain and flooded again. Dozens of mines closed and Gladstone had to scale back its sea port (where a lot of the coal is exported from), which costs the country an astronomical amount in lost GDP. Not to mention the loss of pretty much all crops throughout Queensland and New South Wales. This caused a massive spike in prices across the country, because there is such a shortage of fresh fruit and veg right now. Livestock was not as badly affected, but farmers were still affected.
On the 10th January Toowoomba is hit by massive flash floods when 60 mm (2.36 inches) fell in an hour. In total they had 160mm in less than two days. Normally, this wouldn’t have done anything. But in an area that is already saturated, the water rushed into the river and then downstream. People were caught in the flash flooding as they left work for the day, with no way to know the severity of the flooding. My co-worker has a friend that was the third car to cross a bridge in Toowoomba and while he was crossing the bridge, 2 metres (7feet) of water smashed into the bridge and took the first two cars that were on the bridge - literally right in front of his eyes. Cars were washed away and people had to wait on their roofs to be rescued. The most heartbreaking story I heard was the one about a a little 13yr boy who gave his life so that SES could rescue his little brother instead. The immediately known death toll was 8, with 70 missing, and the photos and videos displayed all over the news were truly horrifying.
Now the water had to continue downstream. Unfortunately, the flooding control dam Wivenhoe had filled to about 175%. This dam had the equivalent of TWO Sydney Harbour - a million megalitres - flowing into it that day, which is more than half of its full capacity. The dam can hold 225% of its capacity, but if it were to hit that mark and then keep filling, it would disintegrate and the dam would burst. Just imagining the thought is terrifying. And so the government made the decision to open the floodgates to release water from the dam. The dam was at 191% capacity and they had opened an emergency spillway just in case it happened to reach full capacity. Even with all five floodgates open and water pouring out of the dam, at the peak of the floods the water was only 60 centimetres (24in) below the spillway. That’s cutting it awfully fucking close.
All this water had to go somewhere. And that was downstream to Brisbane. The silver lining to this disaster though, was that at least it didn’t happen in the middle of a cyclone. The last flood in 1974 was a result of the cyclone and so nobody had a chance in hell of saving anything. This time the residents had sunshine and perfect weather, and PLENTY of warning, so everyone should have been able to save everything valuable. And yet so many people lost so much. Because it wasn’t handled properly. the army, instead of waiting until after the disaster to come in and clean up, should have been out there with the people that will be in the flood affected areas, pulling furniture up onto roofs, transporting valuables to safe locations, creating levee banks to give the most vulnerable places a chance at surviving.
Of course, in the end, it amounted to not a whole lot. Brisbane is still recovering, though thankfully most of it is on the road to repair. There is so much more to post about - the TWO cyclones in less than three days that North Queensland dealt with, but this whole thing is just so depressing.
It’s not over yet, not until the wet season has finished, but for now at least the state and the people and the country are dealing with it and trying to just keep surviving. We’ve had more cyclone scares, but hopefully any that are predicted for the coming weeks don’t hit the coast, because I really don’t know how much more of a pounding we can take.