Floods

[Distracted]

Brown, Garrett and Rudd should all resign

 

The article states the locals campaigned against the dam being built... shouldn't some of the 'blame' go to them too?

[Moses]

i keep wondering how much damage would have been caused by having two or three football field sized dams just outside town waitin to break their banks and how many illegal earthworx diverted the water to where town planning hadnt planned on, and yet those farms will be fully compensated for their losses when most of their product isnt for australians anyway.

politicians also believe in natural selection, the low income are irrelevant to them so they "naturally select" to put them at risk.

Emergency services had people ringing 000 to get help to shift fuckin furniture some morons just dont get it.

friends are an hour from ipswich but their horses were in ipswich and we had to swim to get them the day after xmas so can only imagine how bad it got.

thoughts go to all that lost.

[synchromesh]

i keep wondering how much damage would have been caused by having two or three football field sized dams just outside town waitin to break their banks and how many illegal earthworx diverted the water to where town planning hadnt planned on, and yet those farms will be fully compensated for their losses when most of their product isnt for australians anyway.

 

Yeah, it's a good point. That's how New Orleans got flooded after all.

[ThunderIdeal]

brisbane continues to be chaotic. i just can't get my head around peoples mentality throwing away so much stuff. for example, a full bottle of laundry detergent. shit, you don't even need a bar of soap handy to get it clean, in fact it doesn't even need to be clean to do what it does. some of the wastage is absolutely unjustifiable.

had a very interesting sleep paralysis lastnight, i hope i remember to describe it in the relevant thread when work settles down.

[santiago]

yes all that free salvagable stuff, hire a storage container, fill it up and then fix and sell it, $2000 minimum i reckon you would make for a once off project. surely the professional salvagers must already be in full swing, its basically just free money on the sidewalk.

and the best part is your doing a community service cleaning up.

[hutch]

yes all that free salvagable stuff, hire a storage container, fill it up and then fix and sell it, $2000 minimum i reckon you would make for a once off project. surely the professional salvagers must already be in full swing, its basically just free money on the sidewalk.

and the best part is your doing a community service cleaning up.

 

Scavenger rights at the dump would be alright for a year or two....

[ThunderIdeal]

its already wrecked when it gets to the dump. by then it's been thrown onto the sidewalk, chomped by a bobcat, crushed into a truck, tipped at a temporary site, lifted into a bigger truck, crushed in by an even bigger machine and maybe then it ends up at it's resting place.

i honestly hope that somebody is picking out some of the good stuff because it's just an appalling waste. so long as they stay away from the streets being cleaned up because they would be one more hazard in the way, and two days ago i would say any car on the road without a really good reason was doing a disservice to everyone.

i think a general semblance of sanity has returned now that people are back at work. for all the good they did, the volunteer army on the weekend caused quite a bit of extra craziness just by being there in huge numbers. the rubbish is starting to disappear, much of the mud has dried, traffic is sane.

most brisbaners haven't experienced anything like this and coupled with the media (i gather) really grabbing a hold of it, people have gone a little bit cuckoo, but often with positive results.

nite! i get forced to take a day off soon fuck yeah

Edited January 17, 2011 by ThunderIdeal

[santiago]

i saw on tv that cleanup fever, there was a guy with a good house and he had 20 odd volunteers turfing his contents on the sidewalk, one of them came up and asked if he wanted to keep or throw away his wine collection.............the home owner tipped the bottles back and forth and said to throw away.............now that possibly meant silt had infected the wine or he simply had wrecked labels. somehow i dont reckon water would invade a bottle/s of wine would it.

obviously the people who were covered by insurance just cant be screwed salvaging........as a matter of fact they probably get more money throwing away, still the bottles of wine seem like a good example of wastage and complacency and what the salvagers are actually looking for.

[ThunderIdeal]

presuming there are salvagers! i haven't noticed any, but if anyone has the chance and they can avoid being a nuisance i recommend having a poke around.

[synchromesh]

Dam's releases blamed for inundation

Senior Brisbane engineer Michael O'Brien, who analysed the dam's outflow for The Australian, said: "We have a dam that should have worked but we did not use it properly. It didn't work and we flooded Brisbane. That flooding did not need to occur."

Another engineer who has been examining the published data said he believed the dam had been poorly managed and that "unfortunately it has been turned into a man-made disaster".

[hutch]

Dam's releases blamed for inundation

 

Mate, it's a shocker all right...people died because of these floods and warnings were ignored....

It's the very same thing with Bundaberg. I wrote to Councilor Wayne Honor of the Bundaberg Regional Council on the 2nd of September 2010 because of this article. http://www.courierma...x-1225912972843

I live in the shadow of Paradise Dam which filled for the first time in March last year..(flooded in for 3 weeks). After reading that story it was obvious that big rains could mean big floods so I wanted to know what flood mitigation plans were in place. After being ignored for about a week and when I was just about jump on the phone the river started rising again and our causeway was flooded by about 500mil...I was pleased it looked like something was being done but pissed off because at that hight it was impossible to cross and get to our local store or Childers. Lucky though because at that point we could still get through to Gin Gin but it was a 37klm trip each way just to get the milk...

I rang to speak with my Councilor to thank them for reducing the level but ask could they reduce the flow just a bit...

Turns out the catchment got 30 mm of rain....we got nothing and now the road is flooded again. Made no sense to me so with the help of my reluctant Councilor I managed to set up a meeting with Sunwater, who manage the dam, council and a couple of other concerned residents. I asked Sunwater wether they had any attention of dropping the level of Paradise to to act as flood mitigation...Well the look of horror on their face. "We don't make a habit of releasing water down stream unless we are selling it and there is a policy in place to protect fish stocks. Dickwad... We then discussed the potential of putting in place a warning system that would advise the locals 24 hrs in advance of the causeway going under or the Perry river bridge flooding. A little interest shown buy Sunwater until my local Councilor said council would not be interested as it may make them libel should information be wrong. WTF

The farm beside me was sold just months earlier and the owner rang the DPI (wrong choice) to ask if they thought the river would flood as he was just about to board a plane for OS. How much rain you had says the dickhead on the other line. About 20 mil said the farmer! No chance said our ever reliable DPI man. Wrong...he lost all his pumps from down by the river...the very reason he rang in the first place. I then wrote to the Mayor of Bundaberg on the 7th of October and asked what would need to be done to get this looked at as I said I believed Sunwater were setting Bundaberg up for a major flood, and I even quoted 1974. How spooky am I.... There was no response from our Mayor...Bitch!

The damage bill in Bundy will be massive. With a bit of planning and foresight a lot of it could have been avoided. I have been considering handing over my correspondence to those who will run this inquiry.

What ever happened to common sense? Idiots (to borrow someone else's favorite word) stood up and said.."we won't get rains like we used to get ever again" And then it is the other IDIOTS that believed them

Edited January 18, 2011 by hutch

[Torsten]

Hutch, there is a clear conflict of interest if a company manages a dam for profit as they will always retain as much water as possible. The only way to change that would be to make them liable for damages, but that won't happen unless someone has the money to take them to court.

[hutch]

Hutch, there is a clear conflict of interest if a company manages a dam for profit as they will always retain as much water as possible. The only way to change that would be to make them liable for damages, but that won't happen unless someone has the money to take them to court.

 

Can't do that myself but I am doing my best on the embarrassment route But I do have every intention of speaking with some of the big business's that have been written off in Bundy due to the level of the flood...and there are some big ones... I have a letter to the editor strategy but I just want it to settle down a bit before I start....Do you think me passing my correspondence on to the inquiry would make any difference...This is government policy we are dealing with. They approved Paradise dam and put the policy in place on how it should operate...

Edit: shitful spella

Edited January 18, 2011 by hutch

[Torsten]

yes, pass it on. the enquiry can't know about the issues unless it is being told. Like myself and ost others presumable I am sure they have no diea just what sort of impact a water release has on peopel living downstream the way you explained above. I was just thinking of how inconvenient our creek is because it reacts so quickly to local rain, but at least we get half an hour warning. You don't get any warning and no way to plan for it. What about the danger to local kids playing in/near the creek if they are unaware of the releases. The companies running these thigns hide behind the 'operators manual' as if this was written by an allknowing god. Someone wrote the manual and now it needs to be examined if it is correct. The enquiry is a good place to start and the more grass roots info they get the better as it makes it obvious that there is a systemic failure, not just the odd problem.

[hutch]

yes, pass it on. the enquiry can't know about the issues unless it is being told. Like myself and ost others presumable I am sure they have no diea just what sort of impact a water release has on peopel living downstream the way you explained above. I was just thinking of how inconvenient our creek is because it reacts so quickly to local rain, but at least we get half an hour warning. You don't get any warning and no way to plan for it. What about the danger to local kids playing in/near the creek if they are unaware of the releases. The companies running these thigns hide behind the 'operators manual' as if this was written by an allknowing god. Someone wrote the manual and now it needs to be examined if it is correct. The enquiry is a good place to start and the more grass roots info they get the better as it makes it obvious that there is a systemic failure, not just the odd problem.

 

Thank you...Just what I was hoping you would say. I just walked in from a walk down to the river which is an 8 mile round trip.....What a mess....plenty of time to think and on the way I kept thinking "class action" it just makes sense...I plan on drafting a letter to some big name legal firms that are based in Bundy and see what they think...If you saw all those expensive motor boats and yachts washing out of the port of Bundaberg..wow..it was mind blowing.. We have big business's that are gone! I bet they are pissed off and looking for some compensation.

What if I put up draft letter on here and let others here have some input? We do have some smart ones and it is not one of my expertize..I'm just pissed off and I want our bridge..

[hutch]

Amazing video footage of a man being rescued from the floods in Brazil.....

I think that Australian spirit that we boast about is evident in most countries during natural disasters...thank God for that....this man is so lucky he didn't die...the 2 min video is worth watching....amazing rescue of a man who should be dead.

http://www.aolnews.c...i/?ncid=webmail

[dundee]

Tax levy time

[dreamscape]

New tax levy indeed cant believe our government has to create new taxes and ask for hand outs. I am not wanting to sound like a stick in the mud but am genuinely interested. Just a thought. The majority of foreighn our aid money went to Australian consulting firms and there well over paid consultants. I understand that the people that go to these countries have to be paid well to do such a tough job logistically. But would to love to see a comparison between real world money invested verses services rendered. In 2010-2011 the Australian Government plans to spend almost $4.4 billion on development assistance. Thats a large chunk of change. Im not saying that all our hard erned is wasted over seas but if a government is supposed to be responsible for the amounts of money they controll then surely the tresurer should be considering things like lets say the clean up after a natural disaster. Im sure if any gigantic mega rich company or corperation that even had half the assets that Australia dose, would have provisions other than asking the worker bees for more of there honey. Again just an idea but shouldnt the worst case senario be asumed and provisions accounted for?

Edited February 2, 2011 by dreamscape